THE  LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES 


COPYRIGHT,   1920,  BY 
CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 


CONTENTS 

VI.    RYE  (continued)  :  1904-1909  PAGB 

PREFACE     1 

LETTERS  : 

To  W.  D.  Howells 8 

To  Edward  Lee  Childe        ....  10 

To  W.  E.  Norris         .....  12 

To  Mrs.  Julian  Sturgis       .         .         .         .  14 

To  J.  B.  Pinker 15 

To  Henry  James,  junior     ....  16 

To  Mrs.  W.  K.  Clifford     ....  18 

To  Edmund  Gosse 19 

To  W.  E.  Norris 22 

To  Edmund  Gosse 24 

To  Mrs.  W.  K.  Clifford     ....  29 

To  Edward  Warren 31 

To  Mrs.  William  James       ....  32 

To  William  James 34 

To  Miss  Margaret  James    ....  36 

To  H.  G.  Wells 37 

To  William  James 42 

To  W.  E.  Norris 45 

To  Paul  Harvey 47 

To  William  James 50 

To  William  James 52 

To  Miss  Margaret  James      ....  53 

To  Mrs.  Dew-Smith 55 

To  Mrs.  Wharton        .      '  .  56 

To  W.   E.   Norris 58 

To  Thomas  Sergeant  Perry        ...  61 

To  Gaillard  T.  Lapsley       ....  62 


415282 


vi  CONTENTS 

VI.    RYE:  1904-1909 — continued 
LETTERS  : 

To  Bruce  Porter 65 

To  Miss  Grace  Norton       ....  67 

To  William  James,  junior  ....  71 

To  Howard  Sturgis 72 

To  Howard  Sturgis 74 

To  Madame  Wagniere          .        .        .        •  76 

To  Mrs.  Wharton  *        .  ?8 

To  Miss  Gwenllian  Palgrave       .        .        .          81 
To  William  James        .....          82 

To  W.  E.  Norris 84 

To  W.  E.  Norris 87 

To  Dr.  and  Mrs.  J.  William  White  .        .          88 

To  Mrs.  Wharton 90 

To  Gaillard  T.  Lapsley       ....          92 

To  Mrs.  Wharton 94 

To  Henry   James,   junior    .... 

To  W.  D.  Howells 98 

To  Mrs.  Wharton 104 

To  J.  B.  Pinker 105 

To  Miss  Ellen  Emmet         ....  107 
To  George  Abbot  James     .... 

To  Hugh  Walpole 12 

To  George   Abbot   James    .         .         .         -  1 13 

To  W.  E.  Norris H4 

To  Mrs.  Henry  White         ....  117 

To  W.  D.  Howells H8 

To  Edward  Lee  Childe        ....  120 

To  Hugh  Walpole        .  -  122 

To  Mrs.  Wharton I23 

To  Arthur  Christopher  Benson  .         .         .  125 

To  Charles  Sayle I27 

To  Mrs.  W.  K.  Clifford     ....  129 
To  Miss  Grace  Norton       .... 

To  William  James 

To  H.  G.  Wells 

To  Miss  Henrietta  Reubell  .        .  139 

To  William  James  ....  140 


CONTENTS  vii 

VI.  RYE:  1904-1909— continued 

LETTERS:  PAGB 

To  Mrs.  Wharton 14,2 

To  Madame  Wagniere        .         .         .        .  144 

To  Thomas  Sergeant  Perry       .        .        .  146 

To  Owen  Wister 148 

VII.  RYE  AND  CHELSEA:  1910-1914 

PREFACE 151 

LETTERS  : 

To  T.  Bailey   Saunders      ....  155 

To  Mrs.   Wharton 156 

To  Miss  Jessie  Allen 158 

To  Mrs.  Bigelow 159 

To  W.  E.  Norris 160 

To  Mrs.  Wharton 161 

To  Mrs.  Wharton 163 

To  Bruce  Porter 164 

To  Miss  Grace  Norton       ....  165 

To  Thomas  Sergeant  Perry       .         .         .  167 

To  Mrs.  Wharton 168 

To  Mrs.  Charles  Hunter   ....  170 

To  Mrs.  W.  K.  Clifford     ....  171 

To  W.  E.  Norris 173 

To  Mrs.  Wharton 175 

To  Miss  Rhoda  Broughton        .        .        .  178 

To  H.  G.  Wells 180 

To  C.  E.  Wheeler 183 

To  Dr.  J.  William  White  ....  184 

To  T.  Bailey  Saunders        .         .         .         .  186 

To  Sir  T.  H.  Warren        ....  188 
To  Miss    Ellen    Emmet    (Mrs.    Blanchard 

Rand) 189 

To  Howard   Sturgis 192 

To  Mrs.  William  James      ....  194 

To  Mrs.  John  L.  Gardner  ....  195 

To  Mrs.  Wharton 197 

To  Mrs.  Wilfred  Sheridan          .                 .  199 

To  Miss  Alice  Runnells  201 


viii  CONTENTS 

VII.  RYE  AND  CHELSEA:  1910-1914 — continued 

LETTERS  :  PAGE 

To  Mrs.  Frederic  Harrison       .        .        .  202 

To  Miss  Theodora  Bosanquet   .         .         .  204 

To  Mrs.  William  James     ....  205 

To  Mrs.  Wharton 208 

To  W.  E.  Norris 211 

To  Miss  M.  Betham  Edwards   ...  213 

To  Wilfred  Sheridan 215 

To  Walter  V.  R.  Berry     .        .'     .        .  217 

To  W.  D.  Howells      ....        .  221 

To  Mrs.  Wharton 227 

To  H.  G.  Wells 229 

To  Lady  Bell 231 

To  Mrs.  W.  K.  Clifford   ....  234 

To  Hugh  Walpole 236 

To  Miss  Rhoda  Broughton        .        .        .  238 

To  Henry  James,  junior   ....  239 

To  R.  W.  Chapman 241 

To  Hugh  Walpole       .....  244 

To  Edmund  Gosse 246 

To  Edmund  Gosse      ......  248 

To  Edmund  Gosse      .....  250 

To  Edmund  Gosse 252 

To  Edmund  Gosse 255 

To  Edmund  Gosse 257 

To  H.  G.  Wells 261 

To  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward  ....  264 

To  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward  ....  265 

To  Gaillard  T.  Lapsley     ....  267 

To  John  Bailey 269 

To  Dr.  J.  William  White  ....  272 

To  Edmund  Gosse 274 

To  Mrs.  Bigelow 278 

To  Robert  C.  Witt 280 

To  Mrs.  Wharton 281 

To  A.  F.  de  Navarro          .        ...  286 

To  Henry  James,  junior   .         ...        .  288 

To  Miss  Grace  Norton       .        .        .        .  293 


CONTENTS  ix 

VII.  RYE  AND  CHELSEA:  1910-1914— continued 

LETTERS  :  PAQD 

To  Mrs.  Henry  White        ....  296 

To  Mrs.  William  James      ....  299 

To  Bruce  Porter 302 

To  Lady  Ritchie 304 

To  Mrs.  William  James     ....  305 

To  Percy  Lubbock 310 

To  Two  Hundred  and  Seventy  Friends    .  311 

To  Mrs.  G.  W.  Prothero   ....  313 

To  William  James,  junior          .         .         .  314 

To  Miss  Rhoda  Broughton        .         .        .  317 

To  Mrs.  Alfred  Sutro        ....  319 

To  Hugh   Walpole 322 

To  Mrs.  Archibald  Grove  ....  324 

To  William  Roughead         ....  327 

To  Mrs.  William  James     ....  329 

To  Howard  Sturgis 330 

To  Mrs.  G.  W.  Prothero   ....  332 

To  H.  G.  Wells 333 

To  Logan  Pearsall  Smith  ....  337 

To  C.  Hagberg  Wright      ....  339 

To  Robert  Bridges      .....  341 

To  Andre  Raffalovich         ....  343 

To  Henry  James,  junior   ....  345 

To  Edmund  Gosse 348 

To  Bruce  L.  Richmond      ....  350 

To  Hugh  Walpole 352 

To  Compton  Mackenzie      ....  354 

To  William  Roughead         ....  356 

To  Mrs.  Wharton 357 

To  Dr.  J.  William  White  ....  358 

To  Henry  Adams 360 

To  Mrs.  William  James     ....  361 

To  Arthur  Christopher  Benson          .         .  364 

To  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward  ....  366 

To  Thomas  Sergeant  Perry        .         .         .  367 

To  Mrs.  Wharton 369 

To  William  Roughead         ...        .371 


x  CONTENTS 

VII.  RYE  AND  CHELSEA:  1910-1914— continued 

LETTERS  :  PAGE 

To  William  Roughead         ....  373 

To  Mrs.  Alfred  Sutro         ....  375 

To  Sir  Claude  Phillips       ....  376 


VIII.  THE  WAR:    1914-1916 
PREFACE 
LETTERS  : 


PREFACE          .        •        ...        •        •        379 


To  Howard  Sturgis          .        .        •        .382 

To  Henry  James,  junior        ...  385 

To  Mrs.  Alfred  Sutro     ....  387 

To  Miss  Rhoda  Broughton     .        .        •  389 

To  Mrs.  Wharton 

To  Mrs.  W.  K.  Clifford          ...  392 

To  William  James,  junior      ... 

To  Mrs.  W.  K.  Clifford  ....  397 

To  Mrs.  Wharton 399 

To  Mrs.  R.  W.  Gilder     ....  401 

To  Mrs.  Wharton 403 

To  Mrs.  Wharton 405 

To  Mrs.  T.  S.  Perry       ....  406 

To  Miss  Rhoda  Broughton     .         .         .  408 

To  Edmund  Gosse 409 

To  Miss  Grace  Norton   ....  412 

To  Mrs.  Wharton 414 

To  Thomas  Sergeant  Perry   ...  416 

To  Henry  James,  junior          .         .         -  419 

To  Hugh  Walpole 423 

To  Mrs.  Wharton 425 

To  Mrs.  T.  S.  Perry       ....  427 

To  Edmund  Gosse ; 

To  Miss  Grace  Norton   ....  431 

To  Mrs.  Dacre  Vincent   ....  434 

To  the  Hon.  Evan  Charteris  ...  436 

To  Compton  Mackenzie  ....  437 

To  Miss  Elizabeth  Norton     .        .        •  441 

To  Hugh  Walpole   .        .        -        •        •  444 


CONTENTS  xi 

VIII.  THE  WAB:  1914-1916 — continued 

LETTERS  :  PAGE 

To  Mrs.  Henry  Cabot  Lodge  .         .        .  447 

To  Mrs.  William  James  ....  449 

To  Mrs.  Wharton 452 

To  the  Hon.  Evan  Charteris  .         .        .  453 

To  Mrs.  Wharton 456 

To  Thomas  Sergeant  Perry    .         .         .  459 

To  Edward  Marsh            .   "     .  462 

To  Edward   Marsh           ....  464 

To  Mrs.   Wharton 465 

To  Edward  Marsh 468 

To  G.  W.  Prothero          ....  469 

To  Wilfred  Sheridan        ....  470 

To  Edward  Marsh 472 

To  Edward  Marsh   ....  474 

To  Compton  Mackenzie  ....  475 

To  Henry  James,  junior          .         .         .  477 

To  Edmund  Gosse 480 

To  J.  B.  Pinker       ....  482 

To  Frederic  Harrison      ....  483 

To  H.  G.  Wells 485 

To  H.  G.  Wells 487 

To  Henry  James,  junior          .         .         .  490 

To  Edmund  Gosse 492 

To  John  S.  Sargent         ....  493 

To  Wilfred  Sheridan        ....  494 

To  Edmund  Gosse 496 

To  Mrs.  Wilfred  Sheridan       .         .         .  499 

To  Hugh  Walpole   ...  501 

INDEX  503 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

HENRY  JAMES,  FROM  A  PHOTOGRAPH  BY 

E.  O.  HOPPE  -  Frontispiece 

PAGE    OF    "THE    AMERICAN"    (ORIGINAL 

VERSION)     AS     REVISED     BY    HENRY 

JAMES,  1906       -       -  .      to  face  page  70. 


VI 

RYE  (continued) 

(1904-1909) 

The  much-debated  visit  to  America  took  place 
at  last  in  1904,  and  in  ten  very  full  months  Henry 
James  secured  that  renewed  saturation  in  Ameri 
can  experience  which  he  desired  before  it  should  be 
too  late  for  his  advantage.  He  saw  far  more  of 
his  country  in  these  months  than  he  had  ever  seen 
in  old  days.  He  went  with  the  definite  purpose 
of  writing  a  book  of  impressions,  and  these  were 
to  be  principally  the  impressions  of  a  "restored 
absentee,"  reviving  the  sunken  and  overlaid  mem 
ories  of  his  youth.  But  his  memories  were  practi 
cally  of  New  York,  Newport  and  Boston  only;  to 
the  country  beyond  he  came  for  the  most  part  as 
a  complete  stranger;  and  his  voyage  of  new  dis 
covery  proved  of  an  interest  as  great  as  that  which 
he  found  in  revisiting  ancient  haunts.  The  Ameri 
can  Scene,  rather  than  the  letters  he  was  able  to 
write  in  the  midst  of  such  a  stir  of  movement,  gives 
his  account  of  the  adventure.  On  the  spot  the 
daily  assault  of  sensation,  besetting  him  wherever 
he  turned,  was  too  insistent  for  deliberate  report; 
he  quickly  saw  that  his  book  would  have  to  be 
postponed  for  calmer  hours  at  home;  and  his  let 
ters  are  those  of  a  man  almost  overwhelmed  by 

1 


LETTERS  *0t  HENRY  JAMES    1904-09 


the  amount  that  is  being  thrown  upon  his  power 
of  absorption.  But  the  book  he  eventually  wrote 
shews  how  fully  that  power  was  equal  to  it  all  — 
losing  or  wasting  none  of  it,  meeting  and  reacting 
to  every  moment.  Ten  months  of  America  poured 
into  his  imagination,  as  he  intended  they  should, 
a  vast  mass  of  strange  material  —  the  familiar  part 
of  it  now  after  so  many  years  the  strangest  of  all, 
perhaps  ;  and  his  imagination  worked  upon  it  in  one 
unbroken  rage  of  interest.  He  was  now  more  than 
sixty  years  old,  but  for  such  adventures  of  percep 
tion  and  discrimination  his  strength  was  greater 
than  ever. 

He  sailed  from  England  at  the  end  of  August, 
1904,  and  spent  most  of  the  autumn  with  William 
James  and  his  family,  first  at  Chocorua,  their  coun 
try-home  in  the  mountains  of  New  Hampshire, 
and  then  at  Cambridge.  The  rule  he  had  made 
in  advance  against  the  paying  of  other  visits  was 
abandoned  at  once;  he  was  in  the  centre  of  too 
many  friendships  and  too  many  opportunities  for 
extending  and  enlarging  them.  With  Cambridge 
still  as  his  headquarters  he  widely  improved  his 
knowledge  of  New  England,  which  had  never 
reached  far  into  the  countryside.  At  Christmas 
he  was  in  New  York  —  the  place  that  was  much 
more  his  home,  as  he  still  felt,  than  Boston  had  ever 
become,  yet  of  all  his  American  past  the  most  un 
recognisable  relic  in  the  portentous  changes  of 
twenty  years.  He  struck  south,  through  Philadel 
phia  and  Washington,  in  the  hope  of  meeting  the 
early  Virginian  spring;  but  it  happened  to  be  a 
year  of  unusually  late  snows,  and  his  impressions 
of  the  southern  country,  most  of  which  was  quite 
unknown  to  him,  were  unfortunately  marred.  He 
found  the  right  sub  -tropical  benignity  in  Florida, 
but  a  particular  series  of  engagements  brought  him 
back  after  a  brief  stay.  It  had  been  natural  that 
he  should  be  invited  to  celebrate  his  return  to 


1904-09  RYE  3 

America  by  lecturing  in  public;  but  that  he  should 
do  so,  and  even  with  enjoyment,  was  more  surpris 
ing,  and  particularly  so  to  himself.  He  began  by 
delivering  a  discourse  on  "The  Lesson  of  Balzac" 
— a  closely  wrought  critical  study,  very  attractive 
in  form  and  tone — at  Bryn  Mawr  College,  Penn 
sylvania,  and  was  immediately  solicited  to  repeat 
it  elsewhere.  He  did  this  in  the  course  of  the  win 
ter  at  various  other  places,  so  providing  himself 
at  once  with  the  means  and  the  occasion  for  much 
more  travel  and  observation  than  he  had  expected. 
By  Chicago,  St.  Louis,  and  Indianapolis  he  reached 
California  in  April,  1905.  "The  Lesson  of  Balzac" 
was  given  several  times,  until  for  a  second  visit  to 
Bryn  Mawr  he  wrote  another  paper,  "The  Ques 
tion  of  our  Speech" — an  amusing  and  forcible  ap 
peal  for  care  in  the  treatment  of  spoken  English. 
The  two  lectures  were  afterwards  published  in 
America,  but  have  not  appeared  in  England. 

The  beauty  and  amenity  of  California  was  an 
unexpected  revelation  to  him,  and  it  is  clear  that 
his  experience  of  the  west,  though  it  only  lasted 
for  a  few  weeks,  was  fully  as  fruitful  as  all  that  had 
gone  before.  Unluckily  he  did  not  write  the  con 
tinuation  of  The  American  Scene,  which  was  to 
have  carried  the  record  on  from  Florida  to  the 
Pacific  coast;  so  that  this  part  of  his  journey  is 
only  to  be  followed  in  a  few  hurried  letters  of  the 
time.  He  was  soon  back  in  the  east,  at  New  York 
and  Cambridge  again,  beginning  by  now  to  feel 
that  the  cup  of  his  sensations  was  all  but  as  full  as 
it  would  hold.  The  longing  to  discharge  it  into 
prose  before  it  had  lost  its  freshness  grew  daily 
stronger;  a  year's  absence  from  his  work  had  al 
most  tired  him  out.  But  he  paid  several  last  visits 
before  sailing  for  home,  and  it  was  definitely  in 
this  American  summer  that  he  acquired  a  taste 
which  was  to  bring  him  an  immensity  of  pleasure 
on  repeated  occasions  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  The 


4        LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES     1904-09 

use  of  the  motor-car  for  wide  and  leisurely  sweeps 
through  summer  scenery  was  from  now  onward 
an  interest  and  a  delight  to  which  many  friends 
were  glad  to  help  him — in  New  England  at  this 
time,  later  on  at  home,  in  France  and  in  Italy.  It 
renewed  the  romance  of  travel  for  him,  revealing 
fresh  aspects  in  the  scenes  of  old  wanderings,  and 
he  enjoyed  the  opportunity  of  sinking  into  the 
deep  background  of  country  life,  which  only  came 
to  him  with  emancipation  from  the  railway. 

He  reached  Lamb  House  again  in  August,  1905, 
and  immediately  set  to  work  on  his  American  book. 
It  grew  at  such  a  rate  that  he  presently  found  he 
had  filled  a  large  volume  without  nearly  exhausting 
his  material;  but  by  that  time  the  whole  experience 
seemed  remote  and  faint,  and  he  felt  it  impossible 
to  go  further  with  it.  The  wreckage  of  San  Fran 
cisco,  moreover,  by  the  great  earthquake  and  fire 
of  1906,  drove  his  own  Calif ornian  recollections 
still  further  from  his  mind.  He  left  The  Ameri 
can  Scene  a  fragment,  therefore,  and  turned  to 
another  occupation  which  engaged  him  very  closely 
for  the  next  two  years.  This  was  the  preparation 
of  the  revised  and  collected  edition  of  his  works, 
or  at  least  of  so  much  of  his  fiction  as  he  could  find 
room  for  in  a  limited  number  of  volumes.  To  read 
his  own  books  was  an  entirely  new  amusement  to 
him;  they  had  always  been  rigidly  thrust  out  of 
sight  from  the  moment  they  were  finished  and  done 
with;  and  he  came  back  now  to  his  early  novels 
with  a  perfectly  detached  critical  curiosity.  He 
took  each  of  them  in  hand  and  plunged  into  the 
enormous  toil,  not  indeed  of  modifying  its  sub 
stance  in  any  way — where  he  was  dissatisfied  with 
the  substance  he  rejected  it  altogether — but  of 
bringing  its  surface,  every  syllable  of  its  diction, 
to  the  level  of  his  exigent  taste.  At  the  same  time, 
in  the  prefaces  to  the  various  volumes,  he  wrote 
what  became  in  the  end  a  complete  exposition  of 


1904-09  RYE  5 

his  theory  of  the  art  of  fiction,  intertwined  with  the 
memories  of  past  labour  that  he  found  everywhere 
in  the  much-forgotten  pages.  It  all  represented 
a  great  expenditure  of  time  and  trouble,  besides 
the  postponement  of  new  work;  and  there  is  no 
doubt  that  he  was  deeply  disappointed  by  the  half 
hearted  welcome  that  the  edition  met  with  after 
all,  schooled  as  he  was  in  such  discouragements. 

While  he  was  on  this  work  he  scarcely  stirred 
from  Lamb  House  except  for  occasional  interludes 
of  a  few  weeks  in  London;  and  it  was  not  until 
the  spring  of  1907  that  he  allowed  himself  a  real 
holiday.  He  then  went  abroad  for  three  months, 
beginning  with  a  visit  to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Wharton 
in  Paris  and  a  motor-tour  with  them  over  a  large 
part  of  western  and  southern  France.  With  all 
his  French  experience,  Paris  of  the  Faubourg  St. 
Germain  and  France  of  the  remote  country-roads 
were  alike  almost  new  to  him,  and  the  whole  episode 
was  matter  of  the  finest  sort  for  his  imagination. 
From  The  American  to  The  Ambassadors  he  had  / 
written  scores  of  pages  about  Paris,  but  none  more 
romantic  than  a  paragraph  or  two  of  The  Velvet 
Glove,  in  which  he  recorded  an  impression  of  this 
time — a  sight  of  the  quays  and  the  Seine  on  a  blue 
and  silver  April  night.  From  Paris  he  passed  on 
to  his  last  visit,  as  it  proved,  to  his  beloved  Italy. 
It  was  the  tenth  he  had  made  since  his  settlement 
in  England  in  1876.  Like  every  one  else,  perhaps, 
who  has  ever  known  Rome  in  youth,  he  found 
Rome  violated  and  vulgarised  in  his  age,  but  here 
too  the  friendly  "chariot  of  fire"  helped  him  to  a 
new  range  of  discoveries  at  Subiaco,  Monte  Cas- 
sino,  and  in  the  Capuan  plain.  He  spent  a  few 
days  at  a  friend's  house  on  the  mountain-slope  be 
low  Vallombrosa,  and  a  few  more,  the  best  of  all, 
in  Venice,  at  the  ever-glorious  Palazzo  Barbaro. 
That  was  the  end  of  Italy,  but  he  was  again  in 
Paris  for  a  short  while  in  the  following  spring, 


6     LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES        1904-09 

1908,  motoring  thither  from  Amiens  with  his  host 
ess  of  the  year  before. 

Meanwhile  his  return  to  continuous  work  on 
fiction,  still  ardently  desired  by  him,  had  been 
further  postponed  by  a  recrudescence  of  his  old 
theatrical  ambitions,  stimulated,  no  doubt,  by  the 
comparative  failure  of  the  laborious  edition  of  his 
works.  He  had  taken  no  active  step  himself,  but 
certain  advances  had  been  made  to  him  from  the 
world  of  the  theatre,  and  with  a  mixture  of  motives 
he  responded  so  far  as  to  revise  and  re-cast  a  couple 
of  his  earlier  plays  and  to  write  a  new  one*  The 
one-act  "Covering  End"  (which  had  appeared  in 
The  Two  Magics,  disguised  as  a  short  story)  be 
came  "The  High  Bid,"  in  three  acts;  it  was  pro 
duced  by  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Forbes  Robertson  at  Edin 
burgh  in  March,  1908,  and  repeated  by  them  in 
London  in  the  following  February,  for  a  few  after 
noon  performances  at  His  Majesty's  Theatre. 
"The  Other  House,"  a  play  dating  from  a  dozen 
years  back  which  also  had  seen  the  light  only  as  a 
narrative,  was  taken  in  hand  again  with  a  view  to 
its  production  by  another  company,  and  "The  Out 
cry"  was  written  for  a  third.  The  two  latter 
schemes  were  not  carried  out  in  the  end,  chiefly 
on  account  of  the  troubled  time  of  illness  which 
fell  on  Henry  James  with  the  beginning  of  1910 
and  which  made  it  necessary  for  him  to  lay  aside 
all  work  for  many  months.  But  this  new  intrusion 
of  the  theatre  into  his  life  was  happily  a  much  less 
agitating  incident  than  his  earlier  experience  of  the 
same  sort ;  his  expectations  were  now  fewer  and  his 
composure  was  more  securely  based.  The  misfor 
tune  was  that  again  a  considerable  space  of  time 
was  lost  to  the  novel — and  in  particular  to  the  novel 
of  American*  life  that  he  had  designed  to  be  one  of 
the  results  of  his  year  of  repatriation.  The  bliss 
ful  hours  of  dictation  in  the  garden-house  at  Rye 
were  interrupted  while  he  was  at  work  on  the  plays ; 


1904-09  RYE  7 

he  found  he  could  compass  the  concision  of  the 
play-form  only  by  writing  with  his  own  hand,  fore 
going  the  temptation  to  expand  and  develop  which 
came  while  he  created  aloud.  But  his  keenest  wish 
was  to  get  back  to  the  novel  once  more,  and  he  was 
clearing  the  way  to  it  at  the  end  of  1909  when  all 
his  plans  were  overturned  by  a  long  and  distress 
ing  illness.  He  never  reached  the  American  novel 
until  four  years  later,  and  he  did  not  live  to 
finish  it. 


To  W.  D.  Howells. 

Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
Jan.  8th,  1904, 

My  dear  Howells, 

I  am  infinitely  beholden  to  you  for  two  good 
letters,  the  second  of  which  has  come  in  to-day, 
following  close  on  the  heels  of  the  first  and  greet 
ing  me  most  benevolently  as  I  rise  from  the  couch 
of  solitary  pain.  Which  means  nothing  worse  than 
that  I  have  been  in  bed  with  odious  and  incon 
venient  gout,  and  have  but  just  tumbled  out  to 
deal,  by  this  helpful  machinery,  with  dreadful 
arrears  of  Christmas  and  New  Year's  correspon 
dence.  Not  yet  at  my  ease  for  writing,  I  thus  in 
flict  on  you  without  apology  this  unwonted  grace 
of  legibility. 

It  warms  my  heart,  verily,  to  hear  from  you 
in  so  encouraging  and  sustaining  a  sense — in  fact 
makes  me  cast  to  the  winds  all  timorous  doubt 
of  the  energy  of  my  intention.  I  know  now  more 
than  ever  how  much  I  want  to  "go" — and  also 
a  good  deal  of  why.  Surely  it  will  be  a  blessing 
to  commune  with  you  face  to  face,  since  it  is  such 
a  comfort  and  a  cheer  to  do  so  even  across  the 
wild  winter  sea.  Will  you  kindly  say  to  Harvey 
for  me  that  I  shall  have  much  pleasure  in  talking 
with  him  here  of  the  question  of  something  serial- 
istic  in  the  North  American,  and  will  broach  the 
matter  of  an  "American"  novel  in  no  other  way 

8 


AET.  GO  TO  W.  D.  HOWELLS  9 

until  I  see  him.  It  comes  home  to  me  much,  in 
truth,  that,  after  my  immensely  long  absence,  I 
am  not  quite  in  a  position  to  answer  in  advance 
for  the  quantity  and  quality,  the  exact  form  and 
colour,  of  my  "reaction"  in  presence  of  the  native 
phenomena.  I  only  feel  tolerably  confident  that 
a  reaction  of  some  sort  there  will  be.  What  af 
fects  me  as  indispensable — or  rather  what  I  am 
conscious  of  as  a  great  personal  desire — is  some 
such  energy  of  direct  action  as  will  enable  me  to 
cross  the  country  and  see  California,  and  also  have 
a  look  at  the  South.  I  am  hungry  for  Material, 
whatever  I  may  be  moved  to  do  with  it;  and, 
honestly,  I  think,  there  will  not  be  an  inch  or  an 
ounce  of  it  unlikely  to  prove  grist  to  my  intellectual 
and  "artistic"  mill.  You  speak  of  one's  possible 
"hates"  and  loves — that  is  aversions  and  tender 
nesses — in  the  dire  confrontation;  but  I  seem  to 
feel,  about  myself,  that  I  proceed  but  scantly,  in 
these  chill  years,  by  those  particular  categories  and 
rebounds;  in  short  that,  somehow,  such  fine  primi 
tive  passions  lose  themselves  for  me  in  the  act  of 
contemplation,  or  at  any  rate  in  the  act  of  reproduc 
tion.  However,  you  are  much  more  passionate  than 
I,  and  I  will  wait  upon  your  words,  and  try  and 
learn  from  you  a  little  to  be  shocked  and  charmed 
in  the  right  places.  What  mainly  appals  me  is  the 
idea  of  going  a  good  many  months  without  a  quiet 
corner  to  do  my  daily  stint ;  so  much  so  in  fact  that 
this  is  quite  unthinkable,  and  that  I  shall  only  have 
courage  to  advance  by  nursing  the  dream  of  a  sky- 
parlour  of  some  sort,  in  some  cranny  or  crevice  of 
the  continent,  in  which  my  mornings  shall  remain 
my  own,  my  little  trickle  of  prose  eventuate,  and 
my  distracted  reason  thereby  maintain  its  seat.  If 
some  gifted  creature  only  wanted  to  exchange  with 
me  for  six  or  eight  months  and  "swap"  its  customary 
bower,  over  there,  for  dear  little  Lamb  House  here, 
a  really  delicious  residence,  the  trick  would  be  easily 


10         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       190* 

played.  However,  I  see  I  must  wait  for  all  tricks. 
This  is  all,  or  almost  all,  to-day — all  except  to  re 
assure  you  of  the  pleasure  you  give  me  by  your 
remarks  about  the  Ambassadors  and  cognate  topics. 
The  "International"  is  very  presumably  indeed, 
and  in  fact  quite  inevitably,  what  I  am  chronically 
booked  for,  so  that  truly,  even,  I  feel  it  rather  a 
pity,  in  view  of  your  so  benevolent  colloquy  with 
Harvey,  that  a  longish  thing  I  am  just  finishing 
should  not  be  disponible  for  the  N.A.R.  niche; 
the  niche  that  I  like  very  much  the  best,  for  seriali 
sation,  of  all  possible  niches.  But  "The  Golden 
Bowl"  isn't,  alas,  so  employable.  .  .  .  Fortunately, 
however,  I  still  cling  to  the  belief  that  there  are 
as  good  fish  in  the  sea — that  is,  my  sea!  ....  You 
mention  to  me  a  domestic  event — in  Pilla's  life — • 
which  interests  me  scarce  the  less  for  my  having 
taken  it  for  granted.  But  I  bless  you  all.  Yours 
always, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Edward  Lee  CUlde. 

The  name  of  this  friend,  an  American  long  settled  in 
France,  has  already  occurred  (vol.  i.  p.  50)  in  connection 
with  H.  J.'s  early  residence  in  Paris.  Mr.  Childe  (who 
died  in  1911)  is  known  as  the  biographer  of  his  uncle, 
General  Robert  E.  Lee,  Commander  of  the  Confederate 
forces  in  the  American  Civil  War. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

January  19th,  1904. 
My  dear  old  Friend, 

.  .  .  You  write  in  no  high  spirits — over  our  gen 
eral  milieu  or  moment ;  but  high  spirits  are  not  the 
accompaniment  of  mature  wisdom,  and  yours  are 
doubtless  as  good  as  mine.  Like  yourself,  I  put  in 
long  periods  in  the  country,  which  on  the  whole 


AET.  GO     TO  EDWARD  LEE  CHILDE  11 

(on  this  mild  and  rather  picturesque  south  coast) 
I  find  in  my  late  afternoon  of  life,  a  good  and  salu 
tary  friend.  And  I  haven't  your  solace  of  com 
panionship — I  dwell  in  singleness  save  for  an  oc 
casional  imported  visitor — who  is  usually  of  a  sex, 
however,  not  materially  to  mitigate  my  celibacy! 
I  have  a  small — a  very  nice  perch  in  London,  to 
which  I  sometimes  go — in  a  week  or  two,  for  in 
stance,  for  two  or  three  months.  But  I  return 
hither,  always,  with  zest — from  the  too  many  peo 
ple  and  things  and  words  and  motions — into  the 
peaceful  possession  of  (as  I  grow  older)  my  more 
and  more  precious  home  hours.  I  have  a  household 
of  good  books,  and  reading  tends  to  take  for  me 
the  place  of  experience — or  rather  to  become  itself 
(pour  qui  sait  lire)  experience  concentrated.  You 
will  say  this  is  a  dull  picture,  but  I  cultivate  dulness 
in  a  world  grown  too  noisy.  Besides,  as  an  anti 
dote  to  it,  I  have  committed  myself  to  going  some 
time  this  year  to  America — my  first  expedition 
thither  for  21  years.  If  I  do  go  (and  it  is  in 
evitable,)  I  shall  stay  six  or  eight  months — and 
shall  be  probably  much  and  variously  impressed 
and  interested.  But  I  am  already  gloating  over 
the  sentiments  with  which  I  shall  expatriate  my 
self  here. 

You  ask  what  is  being  published  and  "thought" 
here — to  which  I  reply  that  England  never  was 
the  land  of  ideas,  and  that  it  is  now  less  so  than 
ever.  Morley's  Life  of  Gladstone,  in  three  big 
volumes,  is  formidable,  but  rich,  and  is  very  well 
done;  a  type  of  frank,  exhaustive,  intimate  bio 
graphy,  such  as  has  been  often  well  produced  here, 
but  much  less  in  France:  partly,  perhaps,  because 
so  much  cannot  be  told  about  the  lives — private 
lives — of  the  grands  hommes  there.  Of  course  the 
book  is  largely  a  history  of  English  politics  for 
the  last  50  years — but  very  human  and  vivid.  As 
for  talk,  I  hear  very  little — none  in  this  rusticity; 


12         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1904 

but  if  I  pay  a  visit  of  three  days,  as  I  do  occasion 
ally,  I  become  aware  that  the  Free  Traders  and 
the  Chamberlainites  s'entredevorent.  The  question 
bristles  for  me,  with  the  rebarbative;  but  my  prej 
udices  and  dearest  traditions  are  all  on  the  side 
of  the  system  that  has  "made  England  great" — 
and  everything  I  am  most  in  sympathy  with  in  the 
country  appears  to  be  still  on  the  side  of  it,  notably 
the  better — the  best — sort  of  the  younger  men. 
Chamberlain  hasn't  in  the  least  captured  these. 
.  .  .  But  it's  the  midnight  hour,  and  my  fire,  while 
I  write,  has  gone  out.  I  return  again,  most  heartily, 
your  salutation;  I  send  the  friendliest  greeting  to 
Mrs.  Lee  Childe  and  to  the  dear  old  Perthuis,  well 
remembered  of  me,  and  very  tenderly,  and  I  am, 
my  dear  Childe,  your  very  faithful  old  friend, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  W.  E.  Norris. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

January  27th,  1904. 
My  dear  Norris, 

I  have  as  usual  a  charming  letter  from  you 
too  long  unanswered;  and  my  sense  of  this  is  the 
sharper  as,  in  spite  of  your  eccentric  demonstra 
tion  of  your — that  is  of  our  disparities,  or  what 
ever  (or  at  least  of  your  lurid  implication  of  them,) 
it  all  comes  round,  after  all,  to  our  having  infinitely 
much  in  common.  For  I  too  am  making  arrange 
ments  to  be  "cremated,"  and  my  mind  keeps  yours 
company  in  whatever  pensive  hovering  yours  may 
indulge  in  over  the  graceful  operations  at  Woking. 
If  you  will  only  agree  to  postpone  these,  on  your 
own  part,  to  the  latest  really  convenient  date,  I 
would  quite  agree  to  testify  to  our  union  of  friend 
ship  by  availing  myself  of  the  same  occasion  (it 
might  come  cheaper  for  two!)  and  undergoing  the 


AET.  GO  TO  W.  E.  NORRIS  13 

process  with  you.  I  find  I  do  desire,  from  the 
moment  the  question  becomes  a  really  practical 
one,  to  throw  it  as  far  into  the  future  as  possible. 
Save  at  the  frequent  moments  when  I  desire  to 
die  very  soon,  almost  immediately,  I  cling  to  life 
and  propose  to  make  it  last.  I  blush  for  the  friv 
olity,  but  there  are  still  so  many  things  I  want 
to  do!  I  give  you  more  or  less  an  illustration  of 
this,  I  feel,  when  I  tell  you  that  I  go  up  to  town 
tomorrow,  for  eight  or  ten  weeks,  and  that  I  be 
lieve  I  have  made  arrangements  (or  incurred  the 
making  of  them  by  others)  to  meet  Rhoda  Brough- 
ton  in  the  evening  (a  peine  arrive)  at  dinner.  But 
I  shall  make  in  fact  a  shorter  winter's  end  stay 
than  usual,  for  I  have  really  committed  myself  to 
what  is  for  me  a  great  adventure  later  in  the  year ; 
I  have  taken  my  passage  for  the  U.S.  toward  the 
end  of  August,  and  with  that  long  absence  ahead 
of  me  I  shall  have  to  sit  tight  in  the  interval.  So 
I  shall  come  back  early  in  April,  to  begin  to 
"pack,"  at  least  morally;  and  the  moral  prepara 
tion  will  (as  well  as  the  material)  be  the  greater 
as  it's  definitely  visible  to  me  that  I  must,  if  possi 
ble,  let  this  house  for  the  six  or  nine  months.  .  .  . 
But  what  a  sprawling  scrawl  I  have  written 
you !  And  it's  long  past  midnight.  Good  morning ! 
Everything  else  I  meant  to  say  (though  there  isn't 
much)  is  crowded  out. 

Yours  always  and  ever, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


14         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1904 


To  Mrs.  Julian  Sturgis. 

Julian  Sturgis,  novelist  and  poet,  a  friend  of  H.  J.'s  by 
many  ties,  had  died  on  the  day  this  letter  was  written. 

Reform  Club,  Pall  MaU,  S.W. 

April  13,  1904. 
Dearest  Mrs.  Julian, 

I  ask  myself  how  I  can  write  to  you  and  yet 
how  I  cannot,  for  my  heart  is  full  of  the  tenderest 
and  most  compassionate  thought  of  you,  and  I  can't 
but  vainly  say  so.  And  I  feel  myself  thinking  as 
tenderly  of  him,  and  of  the  laceration  of  his  con 
sciousness  of  leaving  you  and  his  boys,  of  giving 
you  up  and  ceasing  to  be  for  you  what  he  so  de 
votedly  was.  And  that  makes  me  pity  him  more 
than  words  can  say — with  the  wretchedness  of  one's 
not  having  been  able  to  contribute  to  help  or  save 
him.  But  there  he  is  in  his  sacrifice — a  beautiful, 
noble,  stainless  memory,  without  the  shadow  upon 
him,  or  the  shadow  of  a  shadow,  of  a  single  gross- 
ness  or  meanness  or  ugliness — the  world's  dust  on 
the  nature  of  thousands  of  men.  Everything  that 
was  high  and  charming  in  him  comes  out  as  one 
holds  on  to  him,  and  when  I  think  of  my  friendship 
of  so  many  years  with  him  I  see  it  all  as  fairness 
and  felicity.  And  then  I  think  of  your  admirable 
years  and  I  find  no  words  for  your  loss.  I  only 
desire  to  keep  near  you  and  remain  more  than  ever 
yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


AET.  ei  TO  J.  B.  PINKER  15 


To  J.  B.  Pinker. 

Mr.  Pinker  was  now  acting,  as  he  continued  to  do  till  the 
end,  as  H.  J.'s  literary  agent.  This  letter  refers  to  The 
Golden  Bowl. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
May  20th,  1904. 

Dear  Mr.  Pinker, 

I  will  indeed  let  you  have  the  whole  of 
my  MS.  on  the  very  first  possible  day,  now  not 
far  off;  but  I  have  still,  absolutely,  to  finish,  and 
to  finish  right.  ...  I  have  been  working  on  the 
book  with  unremitting  intensity  the  whole  of  every 
blessed  morning  since  I  began  it,  some  thirteen 
months  ago,  and  I  am  at  present  within  but  some 
twelve  or  fifteen  thousand  words  of  Finis.  But  I 
can  work  only  in  my  own  way — a  deucedly  good 
one,  by  the  same  token! — and  am  producing  the 
best  book,  I  seem  to  conceive,  that  I  have  ever  done. 
I  have  really  done  it  fast,  for  what  it  is,  and  for  the 
way  I  do  it — the  way  I  seem  condemned  to ;  which 
is  to  overtreat  my  subject  by  developments  and 
amplifications  that  have,  in  large  part,  eventually 
to  be  greatly  compressed,  but  to  the  prior  operation 
of  which  the  thing  afterwards  owes  what  is  most 
durable  in  its  quality.  I  have  written,  in  perfec 
tion,  200,000  words  of  the  G.B. — with  the  rarest 
perfection! — and  you  can  imagine  how  much  of 
that,  which  has  taken  time,  has  had  to  come  out. 
It  is  not,  assuredly,  an  economical  way  of  work  in 
the  short  run,  but  it  is,  for  me,  in  the  long;  and  at 
any  rate  one  can  proceed  but  in  one's  own  manner. 
My  manner  however  is,  at  present,  to  be  making 
every  day — it  is  now  a  question  of  a  very  moderate 
number  of  days — a  straight  step  nearer  my  last 
page,  comparatively  close  at  hand.  You  shall  have 
it,  I  repeat,  with  the  very  minimum  further  delay 
of  which  I  am  capable.  I  do  not  seem  to  know,  by 
the  way,  when  it  is  Methuen's  desire  that  the  vol- 


16         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1904 

ume  shall  appear — I  mean  after  the  postpone 
ments  we  have  had.  The  best  time  for  me,  I  think, 
especially  in  America,  will  be  about  next  October, 
and  I  promise  you  the  thing  in  distinct  time  for 
that.  But  you  will  say  that  I  am  "over-treating" 
this  subject  too!  Believe  me  yours  ever, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Henry  James,  junior. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

July  26th,  1904. 
Dearest  H. 

Your  letter  from  Chocorua,  received  a  day 
or  two  ago,  has  a  rare  charm  and  value  for  me,  and 
in  fact  brings  to  my  jeyes  tears  of  gratitude  and 
appreciation!  I  can't  tell  you  how  I  thank  you 
for  offering  me  your  manly  breast  to  hurl  myself 
upon  in  the  event  of  my  alighting  on  the  New  York 
dock,  four  or  five  weeks  hence,  in  abject  and  crftven 
terror — which  I  foresee  as  a  certainty;  so  that  I 
accept  without  shame  or  scruple  the  beautiful  and 
blessed  offer  of  aid  and  comfort  that  you  make  me. 
I  have  it  at  heart  to  notify  you  that  you  will  in  all 
probability  bitterly  repent  of  your  generosity,  and 
that  I  shall  be  sure  to  become  for  you  a  dead 
weight  of  the  first  water,  the  most  awful  burden, 
nuisance,  parasite,  pestilence  and  plaster  that  you 
have  ever  known.  But  this  said,  I  prepare  even 
now  to  me  cramponner  to  you  like  grim  death, 
trusting  to  you  for  everything  and  invoking  you 
from  moment  to  moment  as  my  providence  and 
saviour.  I  go  on  assuming  that  I  shall  get  off 
from  Southampton  in  the  Kaiser  Wilhelm  II,  of 
the  North  German  Lloyd  line,  on  August  24th — 
the  said  ship  being,  I  believe,  a  "five-day"  boat, 
which  usually  gets  in  sometime  on  the  Monday. 
Of  course  it  will  be  a  nuisance  to  you,  my  arriving 


AET.  6i    TO  HENRY  JAMES,  JUNIOR          17 

in  New  York — if  I  do  arrive;  bul  that  got  itself 
perversely  and  fatefully  settled  some  time  ago,  and 
has  now  to  be  accepted  as  of  the  essence.  Since 
you  ask  me  what  my  desire  is  likely  to  be,  I  haven't 
a  minute's  hesitation  in  speaking  of  it  as  a  probable 
frantic  yearning  to  get  off  to  Chocorua,  or  at  least 
to  Boston  and  its  neighbourhood,  by  the  very  first 
possible  train,  and  it  may  be  on  the  said  Monday. 
I  shall  not  have  much  heart  for  interposing  other 
things,  nor  any  patience  for  it  to  speak  of,  so  long 
as  I  hang  off  from  your  mountain  home ;  yet,  at  the 
same  time,  if  the  boat  should  get  in  late,  and  it  were 
possible  to  catch  the  Connecticut  train,  I  believe  I 
could  bend  my  spirit  to  go  for  a  couple  of  days  to 
the  Emmets',  on  the  condition  that  you  can  go  with 
me.  So,  and  so  only,  could  I  think  of  doing  it. 
Very  kindly,  therefore,  let  them  know  this,  by  wire 
or  otherwise,  in  advance,  and  determine  for  me 
yourself  whichever  you  think  the  best  move.  Grace 
Norton  writes  me  from  Kirkland  Street  that  she 
expects  me  there,  and  Mrs.  J.  Gardner  writes  me 
from  Brookline  that  she  absolutely  counts  on  me; 
in  consequence  of  all  of  which  I  beseech  you  to  hold 
on  to  me  tight  and  put  me  through  as  much  as  possi 
ble  like  an  express  parcel,  paying  50  cents  and  tak 
ing  a  brass  check  for  me.  I  shall  write  you  again 
next  month,  and  meanwhile  I'm  delighted  at  the 
prospect  of  your  being  able  to  spend  September  in 
the  mountain  home.  I  have  all  along  been  counting 
on  that  as  a  matter  of  course,  but  now  I  see  it  was 
fatuous  to  do  so — and  yet  rejoice  but  the  more  that 
this  is  in  your  power.  .  .  .  But  good-night,  dear 
est  H. — with  many  caresses  all  round,  ever  your 
affectionate 

HENRY  JAMES. 


18         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1904 


To  Mrs.  W.  K.  Clifford. 

Chocorua,  N.H.,  U.S.A. 

September  16th,  1904. 

My  dear,  dear  Lucy  C.! 

One's  too  dreadful — I  receive  your  note  and 
your  wire  of  August  23rd,  in  far  New  England, 
under  another  sky  and  in  such  another  world.  I 
don't  know  by  what  deviltry  I  missed  them  at  the 
last,  save  by  that  of  the  Reform  being  closed  for 
cleaning  and  the  use  of  the  Union  (other  Club) 
fraught  with  other  errors  and  delays.  But  the 
Wednesday  a.m.  at  Waterloo  was  horrible  for 
crowd  and  confusion  (passengers  for  ship  so  in 
their  thousands,)  and  I  can't  be  sorry  you  weren't 
in  the  crush  (mainly  of  rich  German- American 
Jews!)  But  that  is  ancient  history,  and  the  worst 
of  this,  now,  here,  is  that,  spent  with  letter-writing 
(my  American  postbag  swollen  to  dreadfulness, 
more  and  more,  and  interviewers  only  kept  at  bay 
till  I  get  to  Boston  and  New  York,)  I  can  only 
make  you  to-night  this  incoherent  signal,  waiting 
till  some  less  burdened  hour  to  be  more  decent  and 
more  vivid.  I  came  straight  up  here  (where  I  have 
been  just  a  fortnight,)  and  these  New  Hampshire 
mountains,  forests,  lakes,  are  of  a  beauty  that  I 
hadn't  (from  my  18th-20th  years)  dared  to  remem 
ber  as  so  great.  And  such  golden  September 
weather — though  already  turning  to  what  the  leaf 
enclosed  (picked  but  by  reaching  out  of  window) 
is  a  very  poor  specimen  of.  It  is  a  pure  bucolic  and 
Arcadian,  wildly  informal  and  uri-"frilled"  life — 
but  sweet  to  me  after  long  years — and  with  many 
such  good  old  homely,  farmy  New  England  things 
to  eat!  Yet  a  she-interviewer  pushed  into  it  yes 
terday  all  the  way  from  New  York,  400  miles,  and 
we  ten  miles  from  a  station,  on  the  mere  chance  of 


AET.  6i     TO  MRS.  W.  K.  CLIFFORD  19 

me,  and  I  took  pity  and  your  advice,  and  surren 
dered  to  her  more  or  less,  on  condition  that  I 
shouldn't  have  to  read  her  stuff — and  I  shan't  I 
So  you  see  I  am  well  in — and  to-morrow  I  go  to 
other  places  (one  by  one)  and  shall  be  in  deeper. 
It's  a  vast,  queer,  wonderful  country — too  unspeak 
able  as  yet,  and  of  which  this  is  but  a  speck  on  the 
hem  of  the  garment!  Forgive  this  poverty  of 
wearied  pen  to  your  good  old 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Edmund  Gosse. 

The  Mount, 
Lenox,  Mass. 
October  27th,  1904. 
My  dear  Gosse, 

The  weeks  have  been  many  and  crowded 
since  I  received,  not  very  many  days  after  my 
arrival,  your  incisive  letter  from  the  depths  of  the 
so  different  world  (from  this  here;)  but  it's  just 
because  they  have  been  so  animated,  peopled  and 
pervaded,  that  they  have  rushed  by  like  loud- 
puffing  motor-cars,  passing  out  of  my  sight  before 
I  could  step  back  out  of  the  dust  and  the  noise  long 
enough  to  dash  you  off  such  a  response  as  I  could 
fling  after  them  to  be  carried  to  you.  And  during 
my  first  three  or  four  here  my  postbag  was  enor 
mously — appallingly — heavy:  I  almost  turned  tail 
and  re-embarked  at  the  sight  of  it.  And  then  I 
wanted  above  all,  before  writing  you,  to  make  my 
self  a  notion  of  how,  and  where,  and  even  what,  I 
was.  I  have  turned  round  now  a  good  many  times, 
though  still,  for  two  months,  only  in  this  corner  of 
a  corner  of  a  corner,  that  is  round  New  England; 
and  the  postbag  has,  happily,  shrunken  a  good  bit 
(though  with  liabilities,  I  fear,  of  re-expanding,) 


20         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES,      1904 

and  this  exquisite  Indian  summer  day  sleeps  upon 
these  really  admirable  little  Massachusetts  moun 
tains,  lakes  and  woods,  in  a  way  that  lulls  my  per 
petual  sense  of  precipitation.  I  have  moved  from 
my  own  fireside  for  long  years  so  little  (have  been 
abroad,  till  now,  but  once,  for  ten  years  previous) 
that  the  mere  quantity  of  movement  remains  some 
thing  of  a  terror  and  a  paralysis  to  me — though  I 
am  getting  to  brave  it,  and  to  like  it,  as  the  sense 
of  adventure,  of  holiday  and  romance,  and  above 
all  of  the  great  so  visible  and  observable  world  that 
stretches  before  one  more  and  more,  comes  through 
and  makes  the  tone  of  one's  days  and  the  counter 
poise  of  one's  homesickness.  I  am,  at  the  back  of 
my  head  and  at  the  bottom  of  my  heart,  transcen- 
dently  homesick,  and  with  a  sustaining  private  ref 
erence,  all  the  while  (at  every  moment,  verily,)  to 
the  fact  that  I  have  a  tight  anchorage,  a  definite 
little  downward  burrow,  in  the  ancient  world — a 
secret  consciousness  that  I  chink  in  my  pocket  as  if 
it  were  a  fortune  in  a  handful  of  silver.  But,  with 
this,  I  have  a  most  charming  and  interesting  time, 
and  [am]  seeing,  feeling,  how  agreeable  it  is,  in  the 
maturity  of  age,  to  revisit  the  long  neglected  and 
long  unseen  land  of  one's  birth — especially  when 
that  land  affects  one  as  such  a  living  and  breathing 
and  feeling  and  moving  great  monster  as  this  one 
is.  It  is  all  very  interesting  and  quite  unexpectedly 
and  almost  uncannily  delightful  and  sympathetic — 
partly,  or  largely  from  my  intense  impression  (all 
this  glorious  golden  autumn,  with  weather  like 
tinkling  crystal  and  colours  like  molten  jewels)  of 
the  sweetness  of  the  country  itself,  this  New  Eng 
land  rural  vastness,  which  is  all  that  I've  seen.  I've 
been  only  in  the  country — shamelessly  visiting  and 
almost  only  old  friends  and  scattered  relations — but 
have  found  it  far  more  beautiful  and  amiable  than 
I  had  ever  dreamed,  or  than  I  ventured  to  remem 
ber.  I  had  seen  too  little,  in  fact,  of  old,  to  have 


AET.  6i  TO  EDMUND  GOSSE  21 

anything,  to  speak  of,  to  remember — so  that  seeing 
so  many  charming  things  for  the  first  time  I  quite 
thrill  with  the  romance  of  elderly  and  belated  dis 
covery.  Of  Boston  I  haven't  even  had  a  full  day 
— of  N.Y.  but  three  hours,  and  I  have  seen  noth 
ing  whatever,  thank  heaven,  of  the  "littery"  world. 
I  have  spent  a  few  days  at  Cambridge,  Mass.,  with 
my*  brother,  and  have  been  greatly  struck  with  the 
way  that  in  the  last  25  years  Harvard  has  come  to 
mass  so  much  larger  and  to  have  gathered  about 
her  such  a  swarm  of  distinguished  specialists  and 
such  a  big  organization  of  learning.  This  impres 
sion  is  increased  this  year  by  the  crowd  of  foreign 
experts  of  sorts  (mainly  philosophic  etc.)  who  have 
been  at  the  St.  Louis  congress  and  who  appear  to 
be  turning  up  overwhelmingly  under  my  brother's 
roof — but  who  will  have  vanished,  I  hope,  when 
I  go  to  spend  the  month  of  November  with  him — 
when  I  shall  see  something  of  the  goodly  Boston. 
The  blot  on  my  vision  and  the  shadow  on  my  path 
is  that  I  have  contracted  to  write  a  book  of  Notes 
— without  which  contraction  I  simply  couldn't  have 
come;  and  that  the  conditions  of  life,  time,  space, 
movement  etc.  (really  to  sec,  to  get  one's  material,) 
are  such  as  to  threaten  utterly  to  frustrate  for  me 
any  prospect  of  simultaneous  work — which  is  the 
rock  on  which  I  may  split  altogether — wherefore 
my  alarm  is  great  and  my  project  much  discon 
certed;  for  I  have  as  yet  scarce  dipped  into  the 
great  Basin  at  all.  Only  a  large  measure  of  Time 
can  help  me — to  do  anything  as  decent  as  I  want : 
wherefore  pray  for  me  constantly ;  and  all  the  more 
that  if  I  can  only  arrive  at  a*  means  of  application 
(for  I  see,  already,  from  here,  my  Tone]  I  shall 
do,  verily,  a  lovely  book.  I  am  interested,  up  to 
my  eyes — at  least  I  think  I  am!  But  you  will  fear, 
at  this  rate,  that  I  am  trying  the  book  on  you  al 
ready.  I  may  have  to  return  to  England  only  as 
a  saturated  sponge  and  wring  myself  out  there.  I 


22        LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1904 

hope  meanwhile  that  your  own  saturations,  and 
Mrs.  Nelly's,  prosper,  and  that  the  Pyrenean,  in 
particular,  continued  rich  and  ample.  If  you  are 
having  the  easy  part  of  your  year  now,  I  hope  you 
are  finding  in  it  the  lordliest,  or  rather  the  wilordli- 
est  leisure.  ...  I  commend  you  all  to  felicity  and 
am,  my  dear  Gosse,  yours  always, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  W.  E.  Norris. 

Boston. 

[Dec.  15,  1904.] 
My  dear  Norris, 

There  is  nothing  to  which  I  find  my  situa 
tion  in  this  great  country  less  favourable  than  to 
this  order  of  communication;  yet  I  greatly  wish, 
1st,  to  thank  you  for  your  beautiful  letter  of  as  long 
ago  as  Sept.  12th  (from  Malvern,)  and  2nd,  not 
to  fail  of  having  some  decent  word  of  greeting  on 
your  table  for  Xmas  morning.  The  conditions  of 
time  and  space,  at  this  distance,  are  such  as  to  make 
nice  calculations  difficult,  and  I  shall  probably  be 
frustrated  of  the  felicity  of  dropping  on  you  by 
exactly  the  right  post.  But  I  send  you  my  affec 
tionate  blessing  and  I  aspire,  at  the  most,  to  lurk 
modestly  in  the  Heap.  You  were  in  exile  (very 
elegant  exile,  I  rather  judge)  when  you  last  wrote, 
but  you  will  now,  I  take  it,  be  breathing  again  bland 
Torquay  (bland,  not  blond) — a  process  having,  to 
my  fancy,  a  certain  analogy  and  consonance  with 
that  of  quaffing  bland  Tokay.  This  is  neither  To 
kay  nor  Torquay — this  slightly  arduous  process, 
or  adventure,  of  mine,  though  very  nearly  as  ex 
pensive,  on  the  whole,  as  both  of  those  luxuries 
combined.  I  am  just  now  amusing  myself  with 
bringing  the  expense  up  to  the  point  of  ruin  by 
having  come  back  to  Boston,  after  an  escape  (tern- 


AET.  61  TO  W.  E.  NORRIS  23 

porary,  to  New  York,)  to  conclude  a  terrible  epi 
sode  with  the  Dentist — which  is  turning  out  an 
abyss  of  torture  and  tedium.  I  am  promised  (and 
shall  probably  enjoy)  prodigious  results  from  it — 
but  the  experience,  the  whole  business,  has  been  so 
fundamental  and  complicated  that  anguish  and 
dismay  only  attend  it  while  it  goes  on — embellished 
at  the  most  by  an  opportunity  to  admire  the  mira 
cles  of  American  expertness.  These  are  truly  a 
revelation  and  my  tormentor  a  great  artist,  but  he 
will  have  made  a  cruelly  deep  dark  hole  in  my  time 
(very  precious  for  me  here)  and  in  my  pocket — 
the  latter  of  such  a  nature  that  I  fear  no  patching 
of  all  my  pockets  to  come  will  ever  stop  the  leak. 
But  meanwhile  it  has  all  made  me  feel  quite  domes 
ticated,  consciously  assimilated  to  the  system;  I 
am  losing  the  precious  sense  that  everything  is 
strange  (which  I  began  by  hugging  close,)  and  it 
is  only  when  I  know  I  am  quite  whiningly  home 
sick  en  dessous,  for  L.H.  and  Pall  Mall,  that  I 
remember  I  am  but  a  creature  of  the  surface.  The 
surface,  however,  has  its  points;  New  York  is  ap 
palling,  fantastically  charmless  and  elaborately 
dire;  but  Boston  has  quality  and  convenience,  and 
now  that  one  sees  American  life  in  the  longer  piece 
one  profits  by  many  of  its  ingenuities.  The  winter, 
as  yet,  is  radiant  and  bell-like  (in  its  frosty  clear 
ness;)  the  diffusion  of  warmth,  indoors,  is  a  signal 
comfort,  extraordinarily  comfortable  in  the  travel 
ling,  by  day — I  don't  go  in  for  nights ;  and  a  marvel 
the  perfect  organisation  of  the  universal  telephone 
(with  interviews  and  contacts  that  begin  in  2  min 
utes  and  settle  all  things  in  them;)  a  marvel,  I  call 
it,  for  a  person  who  hates  notewriting  as  I  do — but 
an  exquisite  curse  when  it  isn't  an  exquisite  bless 
ing.  I  expect  to  be  free  to  return  to  N.Y.,  the 
formidable  in  a  few  days — where  I  shall  inevitably 
have  to  stay  another  month;  after  which  I  hope 
for  sweeter  things — Washington,  which  is  amusing, 


24        LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1904 

and  the  South,  and  eventually  California — with, 
probably,  Mexico.  But  many  things  are  indefinite 
— only  I  shall  probably  stay  till  the  end  of  June. 
I  suppose  I  am  much  interested  —  for  the  time 
passes  inordinately  fast.  Also  the  country  is  un 
like  any  other — to  one's  sensation  of  it;  those  of 
Europe,  from  State  to  State,  seem  to  me  less  dif 
ferent  from  each  other  than  they  are  all  different 
from  this — or  rather  this  from  them.  But  forgive 
a  fatigued  and  obscure  scrawl.  I  am  really  done 
and  demoralized  with  my  interminable  surgical 
(for  it  comes  to  that)  ordeal.  Yet  I  wish  you 
heartily  all  peace  and  plenty  and  am  yours,  my 
dear  Norris,  very  constantly, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Edmund  Gosse. 

The  Breakers  Hotel, 

Palm  Beach, 

Florida. 

February  16th,  1905. 

My  dear  Gosse, 

I  seem  to  myself  to  be  (under  the  disad 
vantage  of  this  extraordinary  process  of  "seeing" 
my  native  country)  perpetually  writing  letters; 
and  yet  I  blush  with  the  consciousness  of  not  hav 
ing  yet  got  round  to  you  again — since  the  arrival 
of  your  so  genial  New  Year's  greeting.  I  have 
been  lately  in  constant,  or  at  least  in  very  frequent, 
motion,  on  this  large  comprehensive  scale,  and  the 
right  hours  of  recueillement  and  meditation,  of 
private  communication,  in  short,  are  very  hard  to 
seize.  And  when  one  does  seize  them,  as  you  know, 
one  is  almost  crushed  by  the  sense  of  accumulated 
and  congested  matter.  So  I  won't  attempt  to  re 
mount  the  stream  of  time  save  the  most  sketchily 


AET.  61  TO  EDMUND  GOSSE  25 

in  the  world.  It  was  from  Lenox,  Mass.,  I  think, 
in  the  far-away  prehistoric  autumn,  that  I  last 
wrote  you.  I  reverted  thence  to  Boston,  or  rather, 
mainly,  to  my  brother's  kindly  roof  at  Cambridge, 
hard  by — where,  alas,  my  five  or  six  weeks  were 
harrowed  and  ravaged  by  an  appalling  experience 
of  American  transcendent  Dentistry — a  deep  dark 
abyss,  a  trap  of  anguish  and  expense,  into  which  I 
sank  unwarily  (though,  I  now  begin  to  see,  to  my 
great  profit  in  the  short  human  hereafter, )  of  which 
I  have  not  yet  touched  the  fin  fond.  (I  mention 
it  as  accounting  for  treasures  of  wrecked  time — I 
could  do  nothing  else  whatever  in  the  state  into 
which  I  was  put,  while  the  long  ordeal  went  on: 
and  this  has  left  me  belated  as  to  everything — 
"  work, "  correspondence,  impressions,  progress 
through  the  land.)  But  I  was  (temporarily)  lib 
erated  at  last,  and  fled  to  New  York,  where  I 
passed  three  or  four  appalled  midwinter  weeks 
(Dec.  and  early  Jan.;)  appalled,  mainly,  I  mean, 
by  the  ferocious  discomfort  this  season  of  unpre 
cedented  snow  and  ice  puts  on  in  that  altogether 
unspeakable  city --from  which  I  fled  in  turn  to 
Philadelphia  and  Washington.  ( I  am  going  back 
to  N.Y.  for  three  or  four  weeks  of  developed  spring 
-I  haven't  yet  (in  a  manner)  seen  it  or  cowardly 
"done"  it.)  Things  and  places  southward  have 
been  more  manageable — save  that  I  lately  spent  a 
week  of  all  but  polar  rigour  at  the  high-perched 
Biltmore,  in  North  Carolina,  the  extraordinary 
colossal  French  chateau  of  George  Vanderbilt  in 
the  said  N.C.  mountains — the  house  2500  feet  in 
air,  and  a  thing  of  the  high  Rothschild  manner,  but 
of  a  size  to  contain  two  or  three  Mentmores  and 
Waddesdons.  .  .  .  Philadelphia  and  Washington 
would  yield  me  a  wild  range  of  anecdote  for  you 
were  we  face  to  face — will  yield  it  me  then;  but  I 
can  only  glance  and  pass — glance  at  the  extraor 
dinary  and  rather  personally-fascinating  President 


26        LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1905 

— who  was  kind  to  me,  as  was  dear  J.  Hay  even 
more,  and  wondrous,  blooming,  aspiring  little  Jus- 
serand,  all  pleasant  welcome  and  hospitality.  But 
I  liked  poor  dear  queer  flat  comfortable  Philadel 
phia  almost  ridiculously  (for  what  it  is — extraor 
dinarily  cossu  and  materially  civilized,)  and  saw 
there  a  good  deal  of  your  friend — as  I  think  she  is 
— Agnes  Repplier,  whom  I  liked  for  her  bravery 
and  (almost)  brilliancy.  (You'll  be  glad  to  hear 
that  she  is  extraordinarily  better,  up  to  now,  these 
two  years,  of  the  malady  by  which  her  future  ap 
peared  so  compromised.)  However,  I  am  tracing 
my  progress  on  a  scale,  and  the  hours  melt  away — 
and  my  letter  mustn't  grow  out  of  my  control.  I 
have  worked  down  here,  yearningly,  and  for  all  too 
short  a  stay — but  ten  days  in  all;  but  Florida,  at 
this  southernmost  tip,  or  almost,  does  beguile  and 
gratify  me — giving  me  my  first  and  last  (evidently) 
sense  of  the  tropics,  or  a  pen  pres,  the  subtropics, 
and  revealing  to  me  a  blandness  in  nature  of  which 
I  had  no  idea.  This  is  an  amazing  winter-resort 
— the  well-to-do  in  their  tens,  their  hundreds,  of 
thousands,  from  all  over  the  land;  the  property 
of  a  single  enlightened  despot,  the  creator  of  two 
monster  hotels,  the  extraordinary  agrement  of 
which  (I  mean  of  course  the  high  pitch  of  mere 
monster-hotel  amenity)  marks  for  me  [how]  the 
rate  at  which,  the  way  in  which,  things  are  done 
over  here  changes  and  changes.  When  I  remember 
the  hotels  of  twenty-five  years  ago  even!  It  will 
give  me  brilliant  chapters  on  hotel-civilization. 
Alas,  however,  with  perpetual  movement  and 
perpetual  people  and  very  few  concrete  objects  of 
nature  or  art  to  make  use  of  for  assimilation,  my 
brilliant  chapters  don't  get  themselves  written — so 
little  can  they  be  notes  of  the  current  picturesque 
— like  one's  European  notes.  They  can  only  be 
notes  on  a  social  order,  of  vast  extent,  and  I  see 
with  a  kind  of  despair  that  I  shall  be  able  to  do 


AET.  6i  TO  EDMUND  GOSSE  27 

here  little  more  than  get  my  saturation,  soak  my 
intellectual  sponge  —  reserving  the  squeezing-out 
for  the  subsequent,  ah,  the  so  yearned-for  peace  of 
Lamb  House.  It's  all  interesting,  but  it  isn't  thrill 
ing — though  I  gather  everything  is  more  really 
curious  and  vivid  in  the  West — to  which  and  Cali 
fornia,  and  to  Mexico  if  I  can,  I  presently  proceed. 
Cuba  lies  off  here  at  but  twelve  hours  of  steamer— 
and  I  am  heartbroken  at  not  having  time  for  a  snuff 
of  that  flamboyant  flower. 

Scant  Augustine,  Feb.  18th. 

I  had  to  break  off  day  before  yesterday,  and 
I  have  completed  meanwhile,  by  having  come  thus 
far  north,  my  sad  sacrifice  of  an  intenser  exoticism. 
I  am  stopping  for  two  or  three  days  at  the  "oldest 
city  in  America"  —  two  or  three  being  none  too 
much  to  sit  in  wonderment  at  the  success  with  which 
it  has  outlived  its  age.  The  paucity  of  the  signs  of 
the  same  has  perhaps  almost  the  pathos  the  signs 
themselves  would  have  if  there  were  any.  There  is 
rather  a  big  and  melancholy  and  "toned"  (with  a 
patina)  old  Spanish  fort  (of  the  16th  century,)  but 
horrible  little  modernisms  surround  it.  On  the 
other  hand  this  huge  modern  hotel  (Ponce  de  Leon) 
is  in  the  style  of  the  Alhambra,  and  the  principal 
church  ("Presbyterian")  in  that  of  the  mosque  of 
Cordova.  So  there  are  compensations — and  a  tiny 
old  Spanish  cathedral  front  ("earliest  church  built 
in  America" — late  16th  century,)  which  appeals 
with  a  yellow  ancientry.  But  I  must  pull  off — 
simply  sticking  in  a  memento*  (of  a  public  devel 
opment,  on  my  desperate  part)  which  I  have  no 
time  to  explain.  This  refers  to  a  past  exploit,  but 
the  leap  is  taken,  is  being  renewed;  I  repeat  the 
horrid  act  at  Chicago,  Indianapolis,  St.  Louis,  San 
Francisco  and  later  on  in  New  York — have  already 

*Card  of  admission  to  a  lecture  by  H.  J.  (The  Lesson  of  Balzac), 
Bryn  Mawr  College,  Jan.  19,  1905. 


28        LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1905 

done  so  at  Philadelphia  (always  to  "private"  "lit 
erary"  or  Ladies'  Clubs — at  Philadelphia  to  a  vast 
multitude,  with  Miss  Repplier  as  brilliant  intro 
ducer.  At  Bryn  Mawr  to  700  persons — by  way  of 
a  little  circle. )  In  fine  I  have  waked  up  conferen- 
der,  and  find,  to  my  stupefaction,  that  I  can  do  it. 
The  fee  is  large,  of  course — otherwise !  Indianapo 
lis  offers  <£100  for  50  minutes!  It  pays  in  short 
travelling  expenses,  and  the  incidental  circum 
stances  and  phenomena  are  full  of  illustration.  I 
can't  do  it  often — but  for  £30  a  time  I  should  easily 
be  able  to.  Only  that  would  be  death.  If  I  could 
come  back  here  to  abide  I  think  I  should  really  be 
able  to  abide  in  (relative)  affluence:  one  can,  on 
the  spot,  make  so  much  more  money — or  at  least  I 
might.  But  I  would  rather  live  a  beggar  at  Lamb 
House — and  it's  to  that  I  shall  return.  Let  my 
biographer,  however,  recall  the  solid  sacrifice  I  shall 
have  made.  I  have  just  read  over  your  New  Year's 
eve  letter  and  it  makes  me  so  homesick  that  the  bribe 
itself  will  largely  seem  to  have  been  on  the  side  of 
the  reversion — the  bribe  to  one's  finest  sensibility. 
I  have  published  a  novel — "The  Golden  Bowl" — 
here  (intwovols.)  in  advance  (15  weeks  ago)  of  the 
English  issue — and  the  latter  will  be  (I  don't  even 
know  if  it's  out  yet  in  London)  in  so  comparatively 
mean  and  fine-printed  a  London  form  that  I  have 
no  heart  to  direct  a  few  gift  copies  to  be  addressed. 
I  shall  convey  to  you  somehow  the  handsome  New 
York  page — don't  read  it  till  then.  The  thing  has 
"done"  much  less  ill  here  than  anything  I  have  ever 
produced. 

But  good-night,  verily — with  all  love  to  all,  and 
to  Mrs.  Nelly  in  particular. 

Yours  always, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


AET.  6i     TO  MRS.  W.  K.  CLIFFORD  29 


To  Mrs.  W.  K.  Clifford. 

Hotel  Ponce  de  Leon, 
St.  Augustine,  Florida. 
February  21st,  '05. 
Dearest  old  Friend ! 

I  am  leaving  this  subtropical  Floridian  spot 
from  one  half  hour  to  another,  but  the  horror  of 
not  having  for  so  long  despatched  a  word  to  you, 
the  shame  and  grief  and  contrition  of  it,  are  so 
strong,  within  me,  that  I  simply  seize  the  passing 
moment  by  the  hair  of  its  head  and  glare  at  it  till 
it  pauses  long  enough  to  let  me — as  it  were — em 
brace  you.  Yet  I  feel,  have  felt,  all  along,  that 
you  will  have  understood,  and  that  words  are 
wasted  in  explaining  the  obvious.  Letters,  all 
these  weeks  and  weeks,  day  to  day  and  hour  to 
hour  letters,  have  fluttered  about  me  in  a  dense 
crowd  even  as  the  San  Marco  pigeons,  in  Venice, 
round  him  who  appears  to  have  corn  to  scatter.  So 
the  whole  queer  time  has  gone  in  my  scattering 
corn — scattering  and  chattering,  and  being  chat 
tered  and  scattered  to,  and  moving  from  place  to 
place,  and  surrendering  to  people  (the  only  thing 
to  do  here — since  things,  apart  from  people,  are 
nil;)  in  staying  with  them,  literally,  from  place 
to  place  and  week  to  week  (though  with  old  friends, 
as  it  were,  alone — that  is  mostly,  thank  God — to 
avoid  new  obligations:)  doing  that  as  the  only 
solution  of  the  problem  of  "seeing"  the  country. 
I  am  seeing,  very  well — but  the  weariness  of  so 
much  of  so  prolonged  and  sustained  a  process  is, 
at  times,  surpassing.  It  would  be  a  strain,  a  weari 
ness  (kept  up  so,)  anywhere;  and  it  is  extraordi 
narily  tiresome,  on  occasions,  here.  Vastness  of 
space  and  distance,  of  number  and  quantity,  is  the 
element  in  which  one  lives:  it  is  a  great  complica 
tion  alone  to  be  dealing  with  a  country  that  has 


30        LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1905 

fifty  principal  cities — each  a  law  unto  itself — and 
unto  you:  England,  poor  old  dear,  having  (to 
speak  of)  but  one.  On  the  other  hand  it  is  dis 
tinctly  interesting — the  business  and  the  country, 
as  a  whole ;  there  are  no  exquisite  moments  ( save  a 
few  of  a  funniness  that  comes  to  that;)  but  there 
are  none  from  which  one  doesn't  get  something. 
.  .  .  And  meanwhile  I  am  lecturing  a  little  to  pay 
the  Piper,  as  I  go — for  high  fees  (of  course)  and 
as  yet  but  three  or  four  times.  But  they  give  me 
gladly  £50  for  50  minutes  (a  pound  a  minute — 
like  Patti!) — and  always  for  the  same  lecture  (as 
yet : )  The  Lesson  of  Balzac.  I  do  it  beautifully — 
feel  as  if  I  had  discovered  my  vocation — at  any  rate 
amaze  myself.  It  is  well — for  without  it  I  don't 
see  how  I  could  have  held  out. 

.  .  .  This  winter  has  been  a  hideous  succession 
of  huge  snow-blizzards,  blinding  polar  waves,  and 
these  southernmost  places,  even,  are  not  their  usual 
soft  selves.  Yet  the  very  south  tiptoe  of  Florida, 
from  which  I  came  three  days  ago,  has  an  air  as  of 
molten  liquid  velvet,  and  the  palm  and  the  orange, 
the  pine-apple,  the  scarlet  hibiscus,  the  vast  mag 
nolia  and  the  sapphire  sea,  make  it  a  vision  of 
very  considerable  beguilement.  I  wanted  to  put 
over  to  Cuba — but  one  night  from  this  coast;  but 
it  was,  for  reasons,  not  to  be  done — reasons  of  time 
and  money.  I  shall  try  for  Mexico — and  meanwhile 
pray  for  me  hard.  My  visit  is  doing — has  done — 
my  little  reputation  here,  save  the  mark,  great  good. 
The  Golden  Bowl  is  in  its  fourth  edition — un 
precedented!  You  see  I  "answer"  your  last  newses 
and  things  not  at  all — not  even  the  note  of  anxiety 
about  T.  Such  are  these  cruelties,  these  ferocities 
of  separation.  But  I  drink  in  everything  you  tell 
me,  and  I  cherish  you  all  always  and  am  yours  and 
the  children's  twain  ever  so  constantly, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


AET.  61        TO  EDWARD  WARREN  31 


To  Edward  Warren. 

University  Club, 

Chicago. 

March  19th,  1905. 
Dearest  Edward, 

This  is  but  a  mere  breathless  blessing  hurled 
at  you,  as  it  were,  between  trains  and  in  ever  so 
grateful  joy  in  your  brave  double  letter  (of  the 
lame  hand,  hero  that  you  are!)  which  has  just  over 
taken  me  here.  I'm  not  pretending  to  write — I 
can't;  it's  impossible  amid  the  movement  and  ob 
session  and  complication  of  all  this  overwhelming 
muchness  of  space  and  distance  and  time  (con 
sumed,)  and  above  all  of  people  (consuming.)  I 
start  in  a  few  hours  straight  for  California — enter 
my  train  this,  Monday,  night  7.30,  and  reach  Los 
Angeles  and  Pasadena  at  2.30  Thursday  afternoon. 
The  train  has,  I  believe,  barber's  shops,  bathrooms, 
stenographers  and  typists;  so  that  if  I  can  add  a 
postscript,  without  too  much  joggle,  I  will.  But 
you  will  say  "Here  is  joggle  enough,"  for  alack, 
I  am  already  (after  17  days  of  the  "great  Middle 
West")  rather  spent  and  weary,  weary  of  motion 
and  chatter,  anctoh,  of  such  an  unimagined  dreari 
ness  of  ugliness  (on  many,  on  most  sides!)  and  of 
the  perpetual  effort  of  trying  to  "do  justice"  to 
what  one  doesn't  like.  If  one  could  only  damn  it 
and  have  done  with  it!  So  much  of  it  is  rank  with 
good  intentions.  And  then  the  "kindness" — the 
princely  (as  it  were)  hospitality  of  these  clubs; 
besides  the  sense  of  power,  huge  and  augmenting 
power  (vast  mechanical,  industrial,  social,  finan 
cial)  everywhere!  This  Chicago  is  huge,  infinite 
(of  potential  size  and  form,  and  even  of  actual;) 
black,  smoky,  oZJ-looking,  very  like  some  preter- 
naturally  boomed  Manchester  or  Glasgow  lying 
beside  a  colossal  lake  (Michigan)  of  hard  pale 


32         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1905 

green  jade,  and  putting  forth  railway  antennae  of 
maddening  complexity  and  gigantic  length.  Yet 
this  club  (which  looks  old  and  sober  too!)  is  an 
abode  of  peace,  a  benediction  to  me  in  the  looming 
largeness;  I  live  here,  and  they  put  one  up  (always, 
everywhere,)  with  one's  so  excellent  room  with 
perfect  bathroom  and  w.c.  of  its  own,  appurtenant 
(the  universal  joy  of  this  country,  in  private  houses 
or  wherever;  a  feature  that  is  really  almost  a  con 
solation  for  many  things.)  I  have  been  to  the 
south,  the  far  end  of  Florida  &c — but  prefer  the 
far  end  of  Sussex !  In  the  heart  of  golden  orange- 
groves  I  yearned  for  the  shade  of  the  old  L.H. 
mulberry  tree.  So  you  see  I  am  loyal,  and  I  sail 
for  Liverpool  on  July  4th.  I  go  up  the  whole 
Pacific  coast  to  Vancouver,  and  return  to  New 
York  (am  due  there  April  26th)  by  the  Canadian- 
Pacific  railway  (said  to  be,  in  its  first  half,  sub 
lime.  )  But  I  scribble  beyond  my  time.  Your  let 
ters  are  really  a  blessed  breath  of  brave  old  Britain. 
But  oh  for  a  talk  in  a  Westminster  panelled  par 
lour,  or  a  walk  on  far-shining  Camber  sands!  All 
love  to  Margaret  and  the  younglings.  I  have  again 
written  to  Jonathan — he  will  have  more  news  of  me 
for  you.  Yours,  dearest  Edward,  almost  in  nostal 
gic  rage,  and  at  any  rate  in  constant  affection, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  William  James. 

Hotel  del  Coronado, 
Coronado  Beach,  California. 
Wednesday  night, 
April  5th,  1905. 
Dearest  Alice, 

I  must  write  you  again  before  I  leave  this 
place  (which  I  do  tomorrow  noon;)  if  only  to  still 
a  little  the  unrest  of  my  having  condemned  myself, 


AET.  6i       TO  MRS.  WILLIAM  JAMES  33 

all  too  awkwardly,  to  be  so  long  without  hearing 
from  you.  I  haven't  all  this  while — that  is  these 
several  days — had  the  letters  which  I  am  believing 
you  will  have  forwarded  to  Monterey  sent  down  to 
me  here.  This  I  have  abstained  from  mainly  be 
cause,  having  stopped  over  here  these  eight  or  nine 
days  to  write,  in  extreme  urgency,  an  article,  and 
wishing  to  finish  it  at  any  price,  I  have  felt  that  I 
should  go  to  pieces  as  an  author  if  a  mass  of  arrears 
of  postal  matter  should  come  tumbling  in  upon 
me — and  particularly  if  any  of  it  should  be  troub 
lous.  However,  I  devoutly  hope  none  of  it  has  been 
troublous — and  I  have  done  my  best  to  let  you 
know  (in  any  need  of  wiring  etc.)  where  I  have 
been.  Also  the  letterless  state  has  added  itself  to 
the  deliciously  simplified  social  state  to  make  me 
taste  the  charming  sweetness  and  comfort  of  this 
spot.  California,  on  these  terms,  when  all  is  said 
(Southern  C.  at  least — which,  however,  the  real 
C.,  I  believe,  much  repudiates,)  has  completely 
bowled  me  over — such  a  delicious  difference  from 
the  rest  of  the  U.S.  do  I  find  in  it.  (I  speak  of 
course  all  of  nature  and  climate,  fruits  and  flowers ; 
for  there  is  absolutely  nothing  else,  and  the  sense 
of  the  shining  social  and  human  inane  is  utter.) 
The  days  have  been  mostly  here  of  heavenly  beauty, 
and  the  flowers,  the  wild  flowers  just  now  in  partic 
ular,  which  fairly  rage,  with  radiance,  over  the  land, 
are  worthy  of  some  purer  planet  than  this.  I  live 
on  oranges  and  olives,  fresh  from  the  tree,  and  I 
lie  awake  nights  to  listen,  on  purpose,  to  the  lan 
guid  list  of  the  Pacific,  which  my  windows  over 
hang.  I  wish  poor  heroic  Harry  could  be  here — 
the  thought  of  whose  privations,  while  I  wallow  un 
worthy,  makes  me  (tell  him  with  all  my  love) 
miserably  sick  and  poisons  much  of  my  profit.  I 
go  back  to  Los  Angeles  to-morrow,  to  (as  I  wrote 
you  last)  re-utter  my  (now  loathly)  Lecture  to  a 
female  culture  club  of  900  members  (whom  I  make 


34         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1905 

pay  me  through  the  nose,)  and  on  Saturday  p.m. 
8th,  I  shall  be  at  Monterey  (Hotel  del  Monte.) 
But  my  stay  there  is  now  condemned  to  bitterest 
brevity  and  my  margin  of  time  for  all  the  rest  of 
this  job  is  so  rapidly  shrinking  that  I  see  myself 
brulant  mes  etapes,  alas,  without  exception,  and 
cutting  down  my  famous  visit  to  Seattle  to  a  couple 
of  days.  It  breaks  my  heart  to  have  so  stinted 
myself  here — but  it  was  inevitable,  and  no  one  had 
given  me  the  least  inkling  that  I  should  find  Cali 
fornia  so  sympathetic.  It  is  strange  and  incon 
venient,  how  little  impression  of  anything  any  one 
ever  takes  the  trouble  to  give  one  beforehand.  I 
should  like  to  stay  here  all  April  and  May.  But 
I  am  writing  more  than  my  time  permits — my 
article  is  still  to  finish.  I  ask  you  no  questions — 
you  will  have  told  me  everything.  I  live  in  the 
hope  that  the  news  from  Wm.  will  have  been  good. 
At  least  at  Monterey,  may  there  be  some.  .  .  . 
But  good  night — with  great  and  distributed  ten 
derness.  Yours,  dearest  Alice,  always  and  ever, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  William  James. 

Dictated. 

95  Irving  Street, 
Cambridge,  Mass. 
July  2nd,  1905. 
Dearest  W., 

I  am  ticking  this  out  at  you  for  reasons  of 
convenience  that  will  be  even  greater  for  yourself, 
I  think,  than  for  me.  .  .  .  Your  good  letter  of 
farewell  reached  me  at  Lenox,  from  which  I  re 
turned  but  last  evening — to  learn,  however,  from 
A.,  every  circumstance  of  your  departure  and  of 
your  condition,  as  known  up  to  date.  The  grim 
grey  Chicago  will  now  be  your  daily  medium,  but 


AET.62          TO  WILLIAM  JAMES  35 

will  put  forth  for  you,  I  trust,  every  such  flower 
of  amenity  as  it  is  capable  of  growing.  May  you 
not  regret,  at  any  point,  having  gone  so  far  to  meet 
its  queer  appetites.  Alice  tells  me  that  you  are  to 
go  almost  straight  thence  (though  with  a  little  in 
terval  here,  as  I  sympathetically  understand)  to 
the  Adirondacks:  where  I  hope  for  you  as  big  a 
bath  of  impersonal  Nature  as  possible,  with  the 
tub  as  little  tainted,  that  is,  by  the  soapsuds  of 
personal:  in  other  words,  all  the  "board"  you  need, 
but  no  boarders.  I  seem  greatly  to  mislike,  not 
to  say  deeply  to  mistrust,  the  Adirondack  boarder. 
.  .  .  I  greatly  enjoyed  the  whole  Lenox  country 
side,  seeing  it  as  I  did  by  the  aid  of  the  Whartons' 
big  strong  commodious  new  motor,  which  has  fairly 
converted  me  to  the  sense  of  all  the  thing  may  do 
for  one  and  one  may  get  from  it.  The  potent  way 
it  deals  with  a  country  large  enough  for  it  not  to 
rudoyer,  but  to  rope  in,  in  big  free  hauls,  a  huge 
netful  of  impressions  at  once — this  came  home  to 
me  beautifully,  convincing  me  that  if  I  were  rich 
I  shouldn't  hesitate  to  take  up  with  it.  A  great 
transformer  of  life  and  of  the  future!  All  that 
country  charmed  me;  we  spent  the  night  at  Ash- 
field  and  motored  back  the  next  day,  after  a  morn 
ing  there,  by  an  easy  circuit  of  80  miles  between 
luncheon  and  a  late  dinner;  a  circuit  easily  and 
comfortably  prolonged  for  the  sake  of  good  roads. 
.  .  .  But  I  mustn't  rattle  on.  I  have  still  innu 
merable  last  things  to  do.  But  the  portents  are 
all  propitious — absit  any  ill  consequence  of  this 
fatuity !  I  am  living,  at  Alice's  instance,  mainly  on 
huge  watermelon,  dug  out  in  spadefuls,  yet  light 
to  carry.  But  good  bye  now.  Your  last  hints  for 
the  "Speech"  are  much  to  the  point,  and  I  will  try 
even  thus  late  to  stick  them  in.  May  every  comfort 
attend  you! 

Ever  yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


36         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1005 


To  Miss  Margaret  James. 

The  project  of  a  book  on  London  was  never  carried 
further,  though  certain  pages  of  the  autobiographical 
fragment,  The  Middle  Years,  written  in  1914-15,  no 
doubt  shew  the  kind  of  line  it  would  have  taken. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

November  3rd,  1905. 
Dearest  Peg, 

...  In  writing  to  your  father  (which,  how 
ever,  I  shall  not  be  able  to  do  by  this  same  post) 
I  will  tell  him  a  little  better  what  has  been  happen 
ing  to  me  and  why  I  have  been  so  unsociable.  This 
unsociability  is  in  truth  all  that  has  been  happen 
ing — as  it  has  been  the  reverse  of  the  medal,  so  to 
speak,  of  the  great  arrears  and  urgent  applications 
(to  work)  that  awaited  me  here  after  I  parted  with 
you.  I  have  been  working  in  one  way  and  another 
with  great  assiduity,  squeezing  out  my  American 
Book  with  all  desirable  deliberation,  and  yet  in  a 
kind  of  panting  dread  of  the  matter  of  it  all  melt 
ing  and  fading  from  me  before  I  have  worked  it 
off.  It  does  melt  and  fade,  over  here,  in  the  strang 
est  way — and  yet  I  did,  I  think,  while  with  you, 
so  successfully  cultivate  the  impression  and  the 
saturation  that  even  my  bare  residuum  won't  be 
quite  a  vain  thing.  I  really  find  in  fact  that  I  have 
more  impressions  than  I  know  what  to  do  with; 
so  that,  evidently,  at  the  rate  I  am  going,  I  shall 
have  pegged  out  two  distinct  volumes  instead  of 
one.  I  have  already  produced  almost  the  substance 
of  one — which  I  have  been  sending  to  "Harper" 
and  the  N.A.R.,  as  per  contract;  though  publica 
tion  doesn't  begin,  apparently,  in  those  periodicals 
till  next  month.  And  then  (please  mention  to 
your  Dad)  all  the  time  I  haven't  been  doing  the 
American  Book,  I  have  been  revising  with  extreme 


AET.  62    TO  MISS  MARGARET  JAMES        37 

minuteness  three  or  four  of  my  early  works  for  the 
Edition  Definitive  (the  settlement  of  some  of  the 
details  of  which  seems  to  be  hanging  fire  a  little 
between  my  "agent"  and  my  New  York  publishers; 
not,  however,  in  a  manner  to  indicate,  I  think,  a 
real  hitch.)      Please,  however,  say  nothing  what 
ever,  any  of  you  to  any  one,  about  the  existence 
of  any  such  plan.     These  things  should  be  spoken 
of  only  when  they  are  in  full  feather.     That  for 
your  Dad— I  mean  the  information  as  well  as  the 
warning,  in  particular;  on  whom,  you  see,  I  am 
shamelessly  working  off,  after  all,  a  good  deal  of 
my  letter.     Mention  to  him  also  that  still  other 
tracts  of  my  time,  these  last  silent  weeks,  have 
gone,  have  had  to  go,  toward  preparing  for  a  job 
that  I  think  I  mentioned  to  him  while  with  you— 
my  pledge,  already  a  couple  of  years  old^  to  do 
a  romantical-psychological-pictorial  "social"  Lon 
don  (of  the  general  form,  length,  pitch,  and  "type" 
of  Marion  Crawford's  Ave  Roma  Immortalis)  for 
the  Macmillans;  and  I  have  been  feeling  so  nervous 
of  late  about  the  way  America  has  crowded  me  off 
it,  that  I  have  had,  for  assuagement  of  my  nerves, 
to  begin,  with  piety  and  prayer,  some  of  the  very 
considerable  reading  the  task  will  require  of  me. 
All  this  to  show  you  that  I  haven't  been  wantonly 
uncommunicative.     But  good-night,  dear  Peg;  I 
am  going  to  do  another  for  Aleck.    With  copious 

embraces, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  H.  G.  Wells. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
November  19th,  1905. 

My  dear  Wells, 

If  I  take  up  time  and  space  with  telling  you 
I  have  not  sooner  written  to  thank  you  for 


38         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1905 

your  magnificent  bounty,  I  shall  have,  properly, 
to  steal  it  from  my  letter,  my  letter  itself;  a  much 
more  important  matter.  And  yet  I  must  say,  in 
three  words,  that  my  course  has  been  inevitable  and 
natural.  I  found  your  first  munificence  here  on 
returning  from  upwards  of  11  months  in  America, 
toward  the  end  of  July — returning  to  the  mountain 
of  arrears  produced  by  almost  a  year's  absence  and 
(superficially,  thereby)  a  year's  idleness.  I  recog 
nized,  even  from  afar  (I  had  already  done  so) 
that  the  Utopia  was  a  book  I  should  desire  to  read 
only  in  the  right  conditions  of  coming  to  it,  coming 
with  luxurious  freedom  of  mind,  rapt  surrender  of 
attention,  adequate  honours,  for  it  of  every  sort. 
So,  not  bolting  it  like  the  morning  paper  and  sun 
dry,  many,  other  vulgarly  importunate  things,  and 
knowing,  moreover,  I  had  already  shown  you  that 
though  I  was  slow  I  was  safe,  and  even  certain,  I 
"came  to  it"  only  a  short  time  since,  and  surren 
dered  myself  to  it  absolutely.  And  it  was  while  I 
was  at  the  bottom  of  the  crystal  well  that  Kipps 
suddenly  appeared,  thrusting  his  honest  and  inimi 
table  head  over  the  edge  and  calling  down  to  me, 
with  his  note  of  wondrous  truth,  that  he  had  busi 
ness  with  me  above.  I  took  my  time,  however, 
there  below  (though  "below"  be  a  most  improper 
figure  for  your  sublime  and  vertiginous  heights,) 
and  achieved  a  complete  saturation;  after  which, 
reascending  and  making  out  things  again,  little  by 
little,  in  the  dingy  air  of  the  actual,  I  found  Kipps, 
in  his  place,  awaiting  me — and  from  his  so  different 
but  still  so  utterly  coercive  embrace  I  have  just 
emerged.  It  was  really  very  well  he  was  there,  for 
I  found  (and  it's  even  a  little  strange)  that  I  could 
read  you  only — after  you — and  don't  at  all  see 
whom  else  I  could  have  read.  But  now  that  this 
is  so  I  don't  see  either,  my  dear  Wells,  how  I  can 
"write"  you  about  these  things — they  make  me 
want  so  infernally  to  talk  with  you,  to  see  you  at 


AET.  62 


TO  H.  G.  WELLS  39 


length.    Let  me  tell  you,  however,  simply,  that  they 
have  left  me  prostrate  with  admiration,  and  that 
you  are,  for  me,  more  than  ever,  the  most  interest 
ing  "literary  man"  of  your  generation — in  fact,  the 
only  interesting  one.     These  things  do  you,  to  my 
sense,  the  highest  honour,  and  I  am  lost  in  amaze 
ment  at  the  diversity  of  your  genius.    As  in  every 
thing  you  do   (and  especially  in  these  three  last 
Social  imaginations),  it  is  the  quality  of  your  in 
tellect  that  primarily  (in  the  Utopia)  obsesses  me 
and  reduces  me — to  that  degree  that  even  the  colos 
sal  dimensions  of  your  Cheek   (pardon  the  term 
that  I  don't  in  the  least  invidiously  apply)  fails  to 
break  the  spell.     Indeed  your  Cheek  is  positively 
the  very  sign  and  stamp  of  your  genius,  valuable 
to-day,  as  you  possess  it,  beyond  any  other  instru 
ment  or  vehicle,  so  that  when  I  say  it  doesn't  break 
the  charm,  I  probably  mean  that  it  largely  con 
stitutes  it,  or  constitutes  the  force:  which  is  the 
force  of  an  irony  that  no  one  else  among  us  begins 
to  have — so  that  we  are  starving,  in  our  enormities 
and  fatuities,  for  a  sacred  satirist  (the  satirist  with 
jrony — as  poor  dear  old  Thackeray  was  the  satirist 
without  it,)  and  you  come,  admirably,  to  save  us. 
There  are  too  many  things  to  say — which  is  so  ex 
actly  why  I  can't  write.     Cheeky,  cheeky,  cheeky 
is  any  young-man-at-Sandgate's  offered  Plan  for 
the  life  of  Man — but  so  far  from  thinking  that  a 
disqualification  of  your  book,  I  think  it  is  positively 
what  makes  the  performance  heroic.     I  hold,  with 
you,  that  it  is  only  by  our  each  contributing  Uto 
pias   (the  cheekier  the  better)   that  anything  will 
come,  and  I  think  there  is  nothing  in  the  book  truer 
and  happier  than  your  speaking  of  this  struggle 
of  the  rare  yearning  individual  toward  that  sug 
gestion  as  one  of  the  certain  assistances  of  the 
future.    Meantime  you  set  a  magnificent  example—      . 
of  caring,  of  feeling,  of  seeing,  above  all,  and  of 
suffering    from,    and    with,    the    shockingly    sick 


40         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1905 

actuality  of  things.  Your  epilogue  tag  in  italics 
strikes  me  as  of  the  highest,  of  an  irresistible  and 
touching  beauty.  Bravo,  bravo,  my  dear  Wells! 

And  now,  coming  to  Kipps,  what  am  I  to  say 
about  Kipps  but  that  I  am  ready,  that  I  am  com 
pelled,  utterly  to  drivel  about  him?  He  is  not  so 
much  a  masterpiece  as  a  mere  born  gem — you  hav 
ing,  I  know  not  how,  taken  a  header  straight  down 
into  mysterious  depths  of  observation  and  knowl 
edge,  I  know  not  which  and  where,  and  come  up 
again  with  this  rounded  pearl  of  the  diver.  But 
of  course  you  know  yourself  how  immitigably  the 
thing  is  done — it  is  of  such  a  brilliancy  of  true  truth. 
I  really  think  that  you  have  done,  at  this  time  of 
day,  two  particular  things  for  the  first  time  of  their 
doing  among  us.  (1)  You  have  written  the  first 
closely  and  intimately,  the  first  intelligently  and 
consistently  ironic  or  satiric  novel.  In  everything 
else  there  has  always  been  the  sentimental  or  con 
ventional  interference,  the  interference  of  which 
Thackeray  is  full.  (2)  You  have  for  the  very  first 
time  treated  the  English  "lower  middle"  class,  etc., 
without  the  picturesque,  the  grotesque,  the  fan 
tastic  and  romantic  interference  of  which  Dickens, 
e.g.,  is  so  misleadingly,  of  which  even  George  Eliot 
is  so  deviatingly,  full.  You  have  handled  its  vul 
garity  in  so  scientific  and  historic  a  spirit,  and  seen 
the  whole  thing  all  in  its  own  strong  light.  And 
then  the  book  has  throughout  such  extraordinary 
life;  everyone  in  it,  without  exception,  and  every 
piece  and  part  of  it,  is  so  vivid  and  sharp  and  raw. 
Kipps  himself  is  a  diamond  of  the  first  water,  from 
start  to  finish,  exquisite  and  radiant ;  Coote  is  con 
summate,  Chitterlow  magnificent  (the  whole  first 
evening  with  Chitterlow  perhaps  the  most  brilliant 
thing  in  the  book — unless  that  glory  be  reserved  for 
the  way  the  entire  matter  of  the  shop  is  done,  in 
cluding  the  admirable  image  of  the  boss.)  It  all 
in  fine,  from  cover  to  cover,  does  you  the  greatest 


AET.  62  TO  H.  G.  WELLS  41 

honour,  and  if  we  had  any  other  than  skin-deep 
criticism  (very  stupid,  too,  at  that,)  it  would  have 
immense  recognition. 

I  repeat  that  these  things  have  made  me  want 
greatly  to  see  you.  Is  it  thinkable  to  you  that  you 
might  come  over  at  this  ungenial  season,  for  a 
night — some  time  before  Xmas?  Could  you,  would 
you?  I  should  immensely  rejoice  in  it.  I  am  here 
till  Jan.  31st— when  I  go  up  to  London  for  three 
months.  I  go  away,  probably,  for  four  or  five 
days  at  Xmas — and  I  go  away  for  next  Saturday- 
Tuesday.  But  apart  from  those  dates  I  would 
await  you  with  rapture. 

And  let  me  say  just  one  word  of  attenuation 
of  my  (only  apparent)  meanness  over  the  Golden 
Bowl.  I  was  in  America  when  that  work  appeared, 
and  it  was  published  there  in  2  vols.  and  in  very 
charming  and  readable  form,  each  vol.  but  moder 
ately  thick  and  with  a  legible,  handsome,  large- 
typed  page.  But  there  came  over  to  me  a  copy  of 
the  London  issue,  fat,  vile,  small-typed,  horrific, 
prohibitive,  that  so  broke  my  heart  that  I  vowed 
I  wouldn't,  for  very  shame,  disseminate  it,  and  I 
haven't,  with  that  feeling,  had  a  copy  in  the  house 
or  sent  one  to  a  single  friend.  I  wish  I  had  an 
American  one  at  your  disposition — but  I  have  been 
again  and  again  depleted  of  all  ownership  in  re 
spect  to  it.  You  are  very  welcome  to  the  British 
brick  if  you,  at  this  late  day,  will  have  it. 

I  greet  Mrs  Wells  and  the  Third  Party  very 
cordially  and  am  yours,  my  dear  Wells,  more  than 

ever, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


42         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1005 


To  William  James. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
November  23rd,  1905. 
Dearest  William, 

I  wrote  not  many  days  since  to  Aleck,  and 
not  very,  very  many  before  to  Peggy — but  I  can't, 
to-night,  hideously  further  postpone  acknowledging 
your  so  liberal  letter  of  Oct.  22nd  (the  one  in  which 
you  enclosed  me  Aleck's  sweet  one,)  albeit  I  have 
been  in  the  house  all  day  without  an  outing,  and 
very  continuously  writing,  and  it  is  now  11  p.m. 
and  I  am  rather  fagged  ....  However,  I  shall 
write  to  Alice  for  information — all  the  more  that 
I  deeply  owe  that  dear  eternal  Heroine  a  letter. 
I  am  not  "satisfied  about  her,"  please  tell  her  with 
my  tender  love,  and  should  have  testified  to  this 
otherwise  than  by  my  long  cold  silence  if  only  I 
hadn't  been,  for  stress  of  composition,  putting  my 
self  on  very  limited  contribution  to  the  post.  The 
worst  of  these  bad  manners  are  now  over,  and 
please  tell  Alice  that  my  very  next  letter  shall  be 
to  her.  Only  she  mustn't  put  pen  to  paper  for  me, 
not  so  much  as  dream  of  it,  before  she  hears  from 
me.  I  take  a  deep  and  rich  and  brooding  comfort 
in  the  thought  of  how  splendidly  you  are  all  "turn 
ing  out"  all  the  while — especially  Harry  and  Bill, 
and  especially  Peg,  and  above  all,  Aleck — in  addi 
tion  to  Alice  and  you.  I  turn  you  over  (in  my 
spiritual  pocket,)  collectively  and  individually,  and 
make  you  chink  and  rattle  and  ring;  getting  from 
you  the  sense  of  a  great,  though  too-much  ( for  my 
use)  tied-up  fortune.  I  have  great  joy  (tell  him 
with  my  love)  of  the  news  of  Bill's  so  superior 
work,  and  yearn  to  have  some  sort  of  a  squint  at  it. 
Tell  him,  at  any  rate,  how  I  await  him,  for  his 
holidays,  out  here — on  this  spot — and  I  wish  I 


AET.62          TO  WILLIAM  JAMES  43 

realized  more  richly  Harry's  present  conditions. 
I  await  him  here  not  less. 

I  mean   (in  response  to  what  you  write  me  of 
your  having  read  the  Golden  B.)   to  try  to  pro 
duce  some  uncanny  form  of  thing,  in  fiction,  that 
will  gratify  you,  as  Brother — but  let  me  say,  dear 
William,  that  I  shall  greatly  be  humiliated  if  you 
do  like  it,  and  thereby  lump  it,  in  your  affection, 
with  things,  of  the  current  age,  that  I  have  heard 
you  express  admiration  for  and  that  I  would  sooner 
descend  to  a  dishonoured  grave  than  have  written. 
Still  I  mil  write  you  your  book,  on  that  two-and- 
two-make-four  system  on  which  all  the  awful  truck 
that  surrounds  us  is  produced,  and  then  descend  to 
my  dishonoured  grave — taking  up  the  art  of  the 
slate  pencil  instead  of,  longer,  the  art  of  the  brush 
(vide  my  lecture  on  Balzac.)     But  it  is,  seriously, 
too  late  at  night,  and  I  am  too  tired,  for  me  to 
express  myself  on  this  question — beyond  saying 
that  I'm  always  sorry  when  I  hear  of  your  reading 
anything  of  mine,  and  always  hope  you  won't— 
you  seem  to  me  so  constitutionally  unable  to  "en 
joy"  it,  and  so  condemned  to  look  at  it  from  a  point 
of  view  remotely  alien  to  mine  in  writing  it,  and 
to  the  conditions  out  of  which,   as  mine,  it  has 
inevitably  sprung — so  that  all  the  intentions  that 
have  been  its  main  reason  for  being    (with  me) 
appear  never  to  have  reached  you  at  all — and  you 
appear  even  to  assume  that  the  life,  the  elements 
forming  its  subject-matter,  deviate  from  felicity 
in  not  having  an  impossible  analogy  with  the  life 
of  Cambridge.     I  see  nowhere  about  me  done  or 
dreamed  of  the  things  that  alone  for  me  constitute 
the  interest  of  the  doing  of  the  novel — and  yet  it 
is  in  a  sacrifice  of  them  on  their  very  own  ground 
that  the  thing  you  suggest  to  me  evidently  con 
sists.     It  shows  how  far  apart  and  to  what  differ 
ent  ends  we  have  had  to  work  out  (very  naturally 
and  properly!)    our   respective   intellectual   lives. 


44         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1905 

And  yet  I  can  read  you  with  rapture — having  three 
weeks  ago  spent  three  or  four  days  with  Manton 
Marble  at  Brighton  and  found  in  his  hands  ever 
so  many  of  your  recent  papers  and  discourses, 
which,  having  margin  of  mornings  in  my  room, 
through  both  breakfasting  and  lunching  there  (by 
the  habit  of  the  house,)  I  found  time  to  read  sev 
eral  of — with  the  effect  of  asking  you,  earnestly, 
to  address  me  some  of  those  that  I  so  often,  in 
Irving  St.,  saw  you  address  to  others  who  were 
not  your  brother.  I  had  no  time  to  read  them 
there.  Philosophically,  in  short,  I  am  "with"  you, 
almost  completely,  and  you  ought  to  take  account 
of  this  and  get  me  over  altogether. — There  are  two 
books  by  the  way  (one  fictive)  that  I  permit  you 
to  raffoler  about  as  much  as  you  like,  for  I  have 
been  doing  so  myself — H.  G.  Wells' s  Utopia  and 
his  Kipps.  The  Utopia  seems  to  me  even  more 
remarkable  for  other  things  than  for  his  character 
istic  cheek,  and  Kipps  is  quite  magnificent.  Read 
them  both  if  you  haven't — certainly  read  Kipps. — 
There's  also  another  subject  I'm  too  full  of  not 
to  mention  the  good  thing  I've  done  for  myself — 
that  is,  for  Lamb  House  and  my  garden — by  mov 
ing  the  greenhouse  away  from  the  high  old  wall 
near  the  house  (into  the  back  garden,  setting  it 
up  better — against  the  street  wall)  and  thereby 
throwing  the  liberated  space  into  the  front  garden 
to  its  immense  apparent  extension  and  beauti- 
fication.  .  .  . 

But  oh,  fondly,  good-night! 

Ever  your 
HENRY. 


AET.  «2  TO  W.  E.  NORRIS  45 


To  W.  E.  Norris 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
December  23rd,  1905. 

My  dear  Norris, 

It  is  my  desire  that  this,  which  I  shall  post 
here  to-morrow,  shall  be  a  tiny  item  in  the  heca 
tomb  of  friendship  gracing  your  breakfast  table  on 
Christmas  morning  and  mingling  the  smoke  of 
(certain)  aged  and  infirm  victims  with  the  finer  and 
fresher  fumes  of  the  board.  But  the  aged  and  in 
firm  propose  and  the  postman  disposes  and  I  can 
only  hope  I  shall  not  be  either  disconcertingly 
previous  or  ineffectively  subsequent.  If  my  mind's 
eye  loses  you  at  sweet  (yet  sublime)  Underbank, 
I  still  see  you  in  a  Devonshire  mild  light  and  feel 
your  Torquay  window  letting  in  your  Torquay  air 
— which,  at  this  distance,  in  this  sadly  Southeast- 
ernized  corner,  suggests  all  sorts  of  enviable  balm 
and  beatitude.  It  was  a  real  pang  to  me,  some 
weeks  ago,  when  you  were  coming  up  to  town,  to 
have  to  put  behind  me,  with  so  ungracious  and 
uncompromising  a  gesture,  the  question,  and  the 
great  temptation,  of  being  there  for  a  little  at  the 
same  moment.  But  there  are  hours  and  seasons— 
and  I  know  the  face  of  them  well — when  my  need 
to  mind  my  business  here,  and  to  mind  nothing  else, 
becomes  absolute — London  tending  rather  over 
much,  moreover,  to  set  frequent  and  freshly-baited 
traps,  at  all  times,  for  a  still  too  susceptible  and 
guileless  old  country  mouse.  All  my  consciousness 
centres,  necessarily,  just  now,  on  a  single  small 
problem,  that  of  managing  to  do  an  "American 
book"  (or  rather  a  couple  of  them,)  that  I  had 
supposed  myself,  in  advance,  capable  of  doing  on 
the  spot,  but  that  I  had  there,  in  fact,  utterly  to 


46         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES 

forswear  —  time,  energy,  opportunity  to  write, 
every  possibility  quite  failing  me — with  the  con 
sequence  of  my  material,  my  "documents"  over 
here,  quite  failing  me  too  and  there  being  nothing 
left  for  me  but  to  run  a  race  with  an  illusion,  the 
illusion  of  still  seeing  it,  which  is,  as  it  recedes,  so 
to  speak,  a  thousand  lengths  ahead  of  me.  I  shall 
keep  it  up  as  a  tour  de  force,  and  produce  my  copy 
somehow  (I  have  indeed  practically  done  one  vol. 
of  "Impressions" — there  are  to  be  two,  separate 
and  differently-titled;)  but  I  am  unable,  mean 
while,  to  dally  by  the  way — the  sweet  wayside  of 
Pall  Mall — or  to  turn  either  to  the  right  or  the  left. 
(My  subject — unless  I  grip  it  tight — melts  away 
— Rye,  Sussex,  is  so  little  like  it;  and  then  where 
am  I  ?  And  yet  the  thing  interests  me  to  do,  though 
at  the  same  time  appalling  me  by  its  difficulty.  But 
I  didn't  mean  to  tell  you  this  long  story  about  it.) 
I  hope  you  are  plashing  yourself  in  more  pellucid 
waters — and  I  find  I  assume  that  there  is  in  every 
way  a  great  increase  of  the  pellucid  in  your  case 
by  the  fact  of  the  neighbouring  presence  of  your 
(as  I  again,  and  I  trust  not  fallaciously  assume) 
sympathetic  collaterals.  I  should  greatly  like,  here, 
a  collateral  or  two  myself — to  find  the  advantage, 
across  the  sea,  of  the  handful  of  those  of  mine  who 
are  sympathetic,  makes  me  miss  them,  or  the  possi 
bility  of  them,  in  this  country  of  my  adoption,  which 
is  more  than  kind,  but  less  than  kin.  ...  I  spend 
the  month  of  January,  further,  in  this  place — then 
I  do  seek  the  metropolis  for  12  or  14  weeks.  I  ex 
pect  to  hear  from  you  that  you  have  carried  off 
some  cup  or  other  (sculling  for  preference)  in  your 
Bank  Holiday  Sports — so  for  heaven's  sake  don't 
disappoint  me.  You're  my  one  link  with  the  Ath 
letic  world,  and  I  like  to  be  able  to  talk  about  you. 
Therefore,  apropos  of  cups,  all  power  to  your 
elbow!  I  know  none  now — no  cup — but  the  un 
inspiring  cocoa — which  I  carry  with  a  more  and 


AET.  02  TO  W.  E.  NORRIS  47 

more  doddering  hand.     But  I  am  still,  my  dear 
Norris,  very  lustily  and  constantly  yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Paul  Harvey. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

March  11,  1906. 
My  dear  Paul, 

...  It  is  delightful  to  me,  please  believe, 
not  wholly  to  lose  touch  of  you — ghostly  and  in 
effective  indeed  as  that  touch  seems  destined  to 
feel  itself.  I  find  myself  almost  wishing  that  the 
whirligig  of  time  had  brought  round  the  day  of 
your  inscription  with  many  honours  on  some  com 
fortable  "retired  list"  which  might  keep  you  a  little 
less  on  the  dim  confines  of  the  Empire,  and  make 
you  thereby  more  accessible  anl  conversible.  Only 
I  reflect  that  by  the  time  the  grey  purgatory  of 
South  Kensington,  or  wherever,  crowns  and  pen 
sions  your  bright  career,  I,  alas,  shall  have  been 
whirled  away  to  a  sphere  compared  to  which  Salon- 
ica  and  even  furthest  Ind  are  easy  and  familiar 
resorts,  with  no  crown  at  all,  most  probably — not 
even  "heavenly,"  and  no  communication  with  you 
save  by  table-raps  and  telepathists  (like  a  really 
startling  communication  I  have  just  had  from — or 
through — a  "Medium"  in  America  (near  Boston,) 
a  message  purporting  to  come  from  my  Mother, 
who  died  25  years  ago  and  from  whom  it  ostensibly 
proceeded  during  a  seance  at  which  my  sister-in- 
law,  with  two  or  three  other  persons,  was  present. 
The  point  is  that  the  message  is  an  allusion  to  a 
matter  known  (so  personal  is  it  to  myself)  to  no 
other  individual  in  the  world  but  me — not  possibly 
either  to  the  medium  or  to  my  sister-in-law;  and 
an  allusion  so  pertinent  and  initiated  and  tender 
and  helpful,  and  yet  so  unhelped  by  any  actual 


48         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1906 

earthly  knowledge  on  any  one's  part,  that  it  quite 
astounds  as  well  as  deeply  touches  me.  If  the  sub 
ject  of  the  message  had  been  conceivably  in  my 
sister-in-law's  mind  it  would  have  been  an  interest 
ing  but  not  infrequent  case  of  telepathy;  but,  as  I 
say,  it  couldn't  thinkably  have  been,  and  she  only 
transmits  it  to  me,  after  the  fact,  not  even  fully 
understanding  it.  So,  I  repeat,  I  am  astounded! 
— and  almost  equally  astounded  at  my  having 
drifted  into  this  importunate  mention  of  it  to  you! 
But  the  letter  retailing  it  arrived  only  this  a.m. 
and  I  have  been  rather  full  of  it.) — I  had  heard 
of  your  present  whereabouts  from  Edward  Childe 
.  .  .  and  I  give  you  my  word  of  honour  that  my 
great  thought  was,  already  before  your  own  good 
words  had  come,  to  attest  to  you,  on  my  own  side, 
and  pen  in  hand,  my  inextinguishable  interest  in 
you.  I  came  back  from  the  U.S.  after  an  absence 
of  nearly  a  year  (11  months)  by  last  midsummer, 
whereupon  my  joy  at  returning  to  this  so  little 
American  nook  took  the  form  of  my  having  stuck 
here  fast  (with  great  arrears  of  sedentary  occupa 
tion  &c.)  till  almost  the  other  day  ...  I  found 
my  native  land,  after  so  many  years,  interesting, 
formidable,  fearsome  and  fatiguing,  and  much 
more  difficult  to  see  and  deal  with  in  any  extended 
and  various  way  than  I  had  supposed.  I  was  able 
to  do  with  it  far  less  than  I  had  hoped,  in  the  way 
of  visitation — I  found  many  of  the  conditions  too 
deterrent ;  but  I  did  what  I  could,  went  to  the  far 
South,  the  Middle  West,  California,  the  whole 
Pacific  coast  &c.,  and  spent  some  time  in  the  East 
ern  cities.  It  is  an  extraordinary  world,  an  alto 
gether  huge  "proposition,"  as  they  say  there,  giving 
one,  I  think,  an  immense  impression  of  material 
and  political  power;  but  almost  cruelly  charmless, 
in  effect,  and  calculated  to  make  one  crouch, 
ever  afterwards,  as  cravenly  as  possible,  at  Lamb 
House,  Rye — if  one  happens  to  have  a  poor  little 


AET.  62  TO  PAUL  HARVEY  49 


L.H.,  R.,  to  crouch  in.)  This  I  am  accordingly 
doing  very  hard — with  intervals  of  London  in 
serted  a  good  deal  at  this  Season — I  go  up  again, 
in  a  few  days,  to  stay  till  about  May.  So  I  am 
not  making  history,  my  dear  Paul,  as  you  are; 
I  am  at  least  only  making  my  very  limited  and 
intimate  own.  Vous  avez  beau  dire,  you,  and  Mrs 
Paul,  and  Miss  Paul,  are  making  that  of  Europe 
— though  you  don't  appear  to  realize  it  any  more 
than  M.  Jourdain  did  that  he  was  talking  prose. 
Have  patience,  .meanwhile — you  will  have  plenty 
of  South  Kensington  later  on  (among  other  retired 
pro-consuls  and  where  Miss  Paul  will  "come  out";) 
and  meanwhile  you  are,  from  the  L.H.  point  of 
view,  a  family  of  thrilling  Romance.  And  it  must 
be  interesting  to  ameliorer  le  sort  des  populations 
— and  to  see  real  live  Turbaned  Turks  going  about 
you,  and  above  all  to  have,  even  in  the  sea,  a  house 
from  which  you  look  at  divine  Olympus.  You  live 
with  the  gods,  if  not  like  them — and  out  of  all  this 
unutterable  Anglo-Saxon  banality — so  extra-ba 
nalized  by  the  extinction  of  dear  Arthur  Balfour. 
I  take  great  joy  in  the  prospect  of  really  getting 
hold  of  you,  all  three,  next  summer.  I  count,  fond 
ly,  on  your  presence  here  and  I  send  the  very 
kindest  greeting  and  blessing  to  your  two  compan 
ions.  The  elder  is  of  course  still  very  young,  but 
how  old  the  younger  must  now  be! 

.  .  .  Yours,  my  dear  Paul,  always  and  ever, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


50         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1905 


To  William  James. 

Professor  and  Mrs.  William  James  had  been  in  Cali 
fornia  at  this  time  of  the  great  San  Francisco  earthquake 
and  conflagration.  They  fortunately  escaped  uninjured, 
but  for  some  days  H.  J.  had  been  in  deep  anxiety  9  not 
knowing  their  exact  whereabouts. 

Reform  Club,  Pall  Mall,  S.W. 

May  4th,  1906. 
Bejoved  Ones! 

I  wrote  you,  feverishly,  last  Saturday,  but 
now  comes  in  a  blest  cable  from  Harry  telling  of 
your  being  as  far  on  your  way  home  as  at  Denver 
and  communicating  thence  in  inspired  accents  and 
form,  and  this,  for  which  I  have  been  yearning  (the 
news  of  your  having  to  that  extent  shaken  off  the 
dust  of  your  ruin),  fills  me  with  such  joy  that  I 
scrawl  you  these  still  agitated  words  of  jubilation 
— though,  I  can't  seem  to  you  less  than  incoherent 
and  beside  the  mark',  I  fear,  till  I  have  got  your 
letter  from  Stanford  which  Harry  has  already 
announced  his  expedition  of  on  the  28th.  (This 
must  come  in  a  day  or  two  more.)  Meanwhile 
there  was  three  days  ago  an  excellent  letter  in  the 
Times  from  Stanford  itself  (or  P. A.)  enabling  me, 
for  the  first  time,  to  conceive  a  little,  and  a  trifle 
less  luridly  to  imagine,  the  facts  of  your  case.  I 
had  at  first  believed  those  facts  to  be  that  you  were 
thrown  bedless  and  roofless  upon  the  world,  semi- 
clad  and  semi-starving,  and  with  all  that  class  of 
phenomena  about  you.  But  how  do  I  know,  after 
all,  even  yet  ?  and  I  await  your  light  with  an  anxiety 
that  still  endures.  I  have  just  parted  with  Bill, 
who  dined  with  me,  and  who  is  to  lunch  with  me  to 
morrow —  (I  going  in  the  evening  to  the  "Academy 
Dinner.")  I  have,  since  the  arrival  of  Harry's 
telegram,  or  cable  of  reassurance — the  second  to 


AET.  63  TO  WILLIAM  JAMES  51 

that  effect,  not  this  of  to-day,  which  makes  the  third 
and  best  —  I  have  been,  as  I  say,  trying,  under 
pressure,  a  three  days'  motor  trip  with  the  Whar- 
tons,  much  frustrated  by  bad  weather  and  from 
which  I  impatiently  and  prematurely  and  gleefully 
returned  to-day:  so  that  I  have  been  separated  from 
B.  for  48  hours.  JSut  I  tell  you  of  him  rather  than 
talk  to  you,  in  the  air,  of  your  own  weird  experi 
ences.  He  is  to  go  on  to  Paris  on  the  6th,  having 
waited  over  here  to  go  to  the  Private  View  of  the 
Academy,  to  see  me  again,  and  to  make  use  of 
Sunday  6th  (a  dies  non  in  Paris  as  here)  for  his 
journey.  It  has  been  delightful  to  me  to  have  him 
near  me,  and  he  has  spent  and  re-spent  long  hours 
at  the  National  Gallery,  from  which  he  derives  (as 
also  from  the  Wallace  Collection)  great  stimulus 
and  profit.  I  am  extremely  struck  with  his  serious 
ness  of  spirit  and  intention — he  seems  to  me  all 
in  the  thing  he  wants  to  do  (and  awfully  intelligent 
about  it;)  so  that  in  fine  he  seems  to  me  to  bring 
to  his  design  quite  an  exceptional  quality  and  kind 
of  intensity.  .  .  .  What  a  family — with  the  gal 
lantries  of  the  pair  of  you  thrown  in!  Well, 
you,  beloved  Alice,  have  needed  so  exceedingly  a 
"change,"  and  I  was  preaching  to  you  that  you 
should  arrive  at  one  somehow  or  perish — whereby 
you  have  had  it  with  a  vengeance,  and  I  hope  the 
effects  will  be  appreciable  (that  is  not  altogether 
accurst)  to  you.  What  I  really  now  most  feel  the 
pang  and  the  woe  of  is  my  not  being  there  to  hang 
upon  the  lips  of  your  conjoined  eloquence.  I  really 
think  I  must  go  over  to  you  again  for  a  month- 
just  to  listen  to  you.  But  I  wait  and  am  ever  more 
and  more  fondly  your 

HENRY. 


LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES 


To  William  James. 

The  Athenaeum,  Pall  Mall,  S.W. 

May  llth,  1906. 
Dearest  William, 

To-day  at  last  reach  me  (an  hour  ago)  your 
blest  letter  to  myself  of  April  19th  and  Alice's  not 
less  sublime  one  (or  a  type-copy  of  the  same,) 
addressed  to  Irving  St.  and  forwarded  by  dear 
Peg,  to  whom  all  thanks  ...  I  have  written  to 
Harry  a  good  deal  from  the  first,  and  to  your  dear 
selves  last  week,  and  you  will  know  how  wide  open 
the  mouth  of  my  desire  stands  to  learn  from  you 
everything  and  anything  you  can  chuck  into  it. 
Most  vivid  and  pathetic  these  so  surprisingly  lucid 
pictures  dashed  down — or  rather  so  calmly  com 
mitted  to  paper — by  both  of  you  in  the  very  midst 
of  the  crash,  and  what  a  hell  of  a  time  you  must 
have  had  altogether.  What  a  noble  act  your  tak 
ing  your  Miss  Martin  to  the  blazing  and  bursting 
San  Francisco  —  and  what  a  devil  of  a  day  of 
anxiety  it  must  have  given  to  the  sublime  Alice. 
Dearest  sublime  Alice,  your  details  of  feeding  the 
hungry  and  sleeping  in  the  backyard  bring  tears 
to  my  eyes.  I  hope  all  the  later  experience  didn't 
turn  to  worse  dreariness  and  weariness  —  it  was 
probably  kept  human  and  "vivid"  by  the  whole 
associated  elements  of  drama.  Yet  how  differently 
I  read  it  all  from  knowing  you  now  restored  to 
your  liberal  home  and  lovely  brood — where  I  hope 
you  are  guest-receiving  and  housekeeping  as  little 
as  possible.  How  your  mother  must  have  folded 
you  in!  I  kept  thinking  of  her,  for  days,  please 
tell  her,  almost  more  than  of  you  I  It's  hideous 
to  want  to  condemn  you  to  write  on  top  of  every 
thing  else — yet  I  sneakingly  hope  for  more,  though 
indeed  it  wouldn't  take  much  to  make  me  sail 
straight  home — just  to  talk  with  you  for  a  week. 


AET.  63  TO  WILLIAM  JAMES  53 

.  .  .  I  return  to  Rye  on  the  16th  with  rapture — 
after  too  long  a  tangle  of  delays  here.  However, 
it  is  no  more  than  the  right  moment  for  adequate 
charm  of  season,  drop  (unberufen!)  of  east  wind 
etc. — But  why  do  I  talk  of  these  trifles  when  what 
I  am  after  all  really  full  of  is  the  hope  that 
they  have  been  crowning  you  both  with  laurels 
and  smothering  you  with  flowers  at  Cambridge. 
Also,  greedily  (for  you),  with  the  hope  that  you 
didn't  come  away  minus  any  lecture-money  due 
to  you.  .  .  . 

But  good-bye  for  now — with  ever  so  tender  love. 

Ever  your  HENHY. 


To  Miss  Margaret  James. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

November  8th,  1906. 
Dearest  Peggot, 

I  have  had  before  me  but  an  hour  or  two 
your  delightful,  though  somewhat  agitating  letter 
of  October  29th,  and  I  am  so  touched  by  your 
faithful  memory  of  your  poor  fond  old  Uncle,  and 
by  your  snatching  an  hour  to  devote  to  him,  even 
as  a  brand  from  the  burning,  that  I  scribble  you 
this  joyous  acknowledgment  before  I  go  to  bed. 
I  have  been  immensely  interested  in  your  whole 
Collegiate  adventure — fragments  of  the  history  of 
which,  so  far  as  you've  got,  I've  had  from  your 
mother — and  all  the  more  interested  that,  by  a  blest 
good  fortune,  I  happen  to  know  your  scholastic 
shades  and  so  am  able,  in  imagination,  to  cling  to 
you  and  follow  you  round.  I  seem  to  make  out 
that  you  are  very  physically  comfortable,  all  round, 
and  I  have  indeed  a  very  charming  image  of  Bryn 
Mawr,  though  I  dare  say  these  months  adorn  it 
less  than  my  June-time.  I  yearn  tenderly  over 
your  home-sickness — and  fear  I  don't  help  you 


54         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1906 

with  it  when  I  tell  you  how  well  I  understand  it 
as,  at  first,  your  inevitable  portion.  To  exchange 
the  realm  of  talk  and  taste  of  Irving  St.  and  the 
privileges  and  luxury  of  your  Dad's  and  your 
Mother's  company  and  genius  for  the  common 
doings  and  sayings,  the  common  air  and  effluence 
of  other  American  homes,  represents  a  sorry  drop 
— which  can  only  be  softened  for  you  by  the  diver 
sion  of  seeking  out  what  charms  of  sorts  these  other 
homes  may  have  had  that  Irving  St.  lacks.  You 
may  not  find  any,  to  speak  of,  but  meanwhile  you 
will  have  wandered  away  and  in  so  doing  will  have 
left  the  bloom  of  your  nostalgia  behind.  It  doesn't 
remain  acute,  but  there  will  be  always  enough  for 
you  to  go  home  with  again.  And  you  will  make 
your  little  sphere  of  relations — which  will  give  out 
an  interest  of  their  own;  and  see  a  lot  of  life  and 
realise  a  lot  of  types,  not  to  speak  of  all  the  enrich 
ing  of  your  mind  and  augmentation  of  your  power. 
Your  poor  old  uncle  groans  with  shame  when  he 
bethinks  himself  of  the  scant  and  miserable  educa 
tion,  and  educative  opportunity,  he  had  [compared 
with]  his  magnificent  modern  niece.  No  one  took 
any  interest  whatever  in  his  development,  except 
to  neglect  or  snub  it  where  it  might  have  helped — 
and  any  that  he  was  ever  to  have  he  picked  up 
wholly  by  himself.  But  that  is  very  ancient  his 
tory  now — and  he  is  very  glad  to  have  picked  up 
Lamb  House,  where  he  sits  writing  you  this  of  a 
wet  November  night  and  communes,  so  far  as  pos 
sible,  on  the  spot,  with  the  ghost  of  the  little  niece 
who  came  down  from  Harrow  to  spend  her  holidays 
in  so  dull  and  patient  and  Waverley-novelly  a 
fashion  with  him.  ...  I  rejoice  greatly  in  your 
sweet  companion — I  mean  in  the  sweetness  of  her 
as  chum  and  comrade,  for  you,  and  I  send,  I  hope 
not  presumptuously,  a  slice  of  your  Uncle's  bless 
ing.  Also  is  it  uplifting  to  hear  that  you  find 
Miss  Carey  Thomas  benevolent  and  inspiring — 


ABT.  63    TO  MISS  MARGARET  JAMES        55 

she  struck  me  as  a  very  able  and  accomplished  and 
intelligent  lady,  and  I  should  like  to  send  her 
through  you,  if  you  have  a  chance,  my  very  faith 
ful  remembrance  and  to  thank  her  very  kindly  for 
her  appreciation  of  my  niece.  But  I  hope  she 
doesn't,  or  won't,  work  you  to  the  bone!  Good 
night,  dear  Child. 

Your  fond  old  Uncle. 


To  Mrs.  Dew-Smith. 

This  refers  to  the  revision  of  Roderick  Hudson,  which 
was  to  head  the  "New  York"  edition  of  his  novels,  now 
definitely  announced. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
November  12th,  1906. 

Dear  Mrs.  Dew-Smith, 

Very  kind  your  note  about  the  apples  and 
about  poor  R.H. !  Burgess  Noakes  is  to  climb  the 
hill  in  a  day  or  two,  basket  on  arm,  and  bring  me 
back  the  rosy  crop,  which  I  am  finding  quite  the 
staff  of  life. 

As  for  the  tidied-up  book,  I  am  greatly  touched 
by  your  generous  interest  in  the  question  of  the 
tidying-up,  and  yet  really  think  your  view  of  that 
process  erratic  and — quite  of  course — my  own  view 
well  inspired!  But  we  are  really  both  right,  for 
to  attempt  to  retouch  the  substance  of  the  thing 
would  be  as  foolish  as  it  would  be  (in  a  done  and 
impenetrable  structure)  impracticable.  What  I 
have  tried  for  is  a  mere  revision  of  surface  and 
expression,  as  the  thing  is  positively  in  many  places 
quite  vilely  written!  The  essence  of  the  matter  is 
wholly  unaltered — save  for  seeming  in  places,  I 
think,  a  little  better  brought  out.  At  any  rate  the 
deed  is  already  perpetrated — and  I  do  continue  to 


56        LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1906 

wish  perversely  and  sorely  that  you  had  waited — 
to  re-peruse — for  this  prettier  and  cleaner  form. 
However,  I  ought  only  to  be  devoutly  grateful — 
as  in  fact  I  am — for  your  power  to  re-peruse  at  all, 
and  will  come  and  thank  you  afresh  as  soon  as  you 
return  to  the  fold;  as  to  which  I  beg  you  to  make 
an  early  signal  to  yours  most  truly, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  Wharton* 

The  desired  visit  to  George  Sand's  Nohant,  was  brought 
off  in  the  following  year,  when  H.  J.  motored  there  with 
Mrs.  Wharton.  "Rue  Barbet  de  Jouy"  is  the  address  in 
Paris  of  M.  Paul  Bourget. 

Reform  Club,  Pall  Mall,  S.W. 
November  17th,  1906. 

Dear  Mrs.  Wharton, 

I  had  from  you  a  shortish  time  since  a  very 
beautiful  and  interesting  letter  —  into  the  ink  to 
thank  you  for  which  my  pen  has  been  perpetually 
about  to  dip,  and  now  comes  the  further  thrill  of 
your  "quaint"  little  picture  card  with  its  news  of 
the  Paris  winter  and  the  romantic  rue  de  Varenne ; 
on  which  the  pen  straightway  plunges  into  the  fluid. 
This  is  really  charming  and  uplifting  news,  and  I 
applaud  the  free  sweep  of  your  "line  of  life"  with 
all  my  heart.  We  shall  be  almost  neighbours,  and 
I  will  most  assuredly  hie  me  as  promptly  as  possi 
ble  across  the  scant  interspace  of  the  Channel,  the 
Pas-de-Calais  &c:  where  the  very  first  question 
on  which  I  shall  beset  you  will  be  your  adventure 
and  impression  of  Nohant — as  to  which  I  burn  and 
yearn  for  fond  particulars.  Perhaps  if  you  have 
the  proper  Vehicle  of  Passion — as  I  make  no  doubt 
— you  will  be  going  there  once  more — in  which 


AET.  63  TO  MRS.  WHARTON  57 

case  do  take  me !  And  such  a  suave  and  convenient 
crossing  as  I  meanwhile  wish  you — and  such  a  pro 
vision  of  philosophy  laid  up,  in  advance,  for  use  in, 
and  about,  rue  Barbet  de  Jouy!  You  will  have 
finished  your  new  fiction,  I  "presume" — if  it  isn't 
presumptuous — before  embarking?  and  I  do  so  for 
the  right  of  the  desire  to  congratulate,  in  that  case, 
and  envy  and  sympathise — being  in  all  sorts  of 
cmbarras  now,  myself,  over  the  finish  of  many 
things.  I  pant  for  the  start  of  that  work  and  lan 
guish  to  take  it  up.  I  think  I  have  had  no  chance 
to  tell  you  how  much  I  admired  your  single  story 
in  the  Aug.  Scribner — beautifully  done,  I  thought, 
and  full  of  felicities  and  achieved  values  and  pic 
tures.  All  the  same,  with  the  rue  de  Varenne  &c., 
don't  go  in  too  much  for  the  French  or  the  "Franco- 
American"  subject — the  real  field  of  your  exten 
sion  is  here — it  has  far  more  fusability  with  our 
native  and  primary  material;  between  which  and 
French  elements  there  is,  I  hold,  a  disparity  as 
complete  as  between  a  life  led  in  trees,  say,  and 
a  life  led  in — sea-depths,  or  in  other  words  between 
that  of  climbers  and  swimmers — or  (crudely)  that 
of  monkeys  and  fish.  Is  the  Play  Thing  meanwhile 
climbing  or  swimming? — I  take  much  interest  in 
its  fate.  But  you  will  tell  me  of  these  things — in 
February!  It  will  be  then  I  shall  scramble  over. 
I  go  home  an  hour  or  two  hence  (to  stay  as  still  as 
possible)  after  a  night — only — spent  in  town.  The 
perpetual  summonses  and  solicitations  of  London 
(some  of  which  have  to  be  met)  are  at  times  a  mad 
dening  worry — or  almost.  I  am  wondering  if  you 
are  not  feeling  just  now  perhaps  a  good  deal,  at 
Lenox,  in  the  apparently  delightful  old  1840  way 
— a  good  snowstorm  ending,  and  the  Westinghouse 
colouring,  as  I  suppose,  a  good  deal  blurred.  But 
how  I  want  to  have  it  all — the  gossip  of  the  coun 
tryside — from  you!  Some  of  it  has  come  to  me  as 
rather  dreadful  .  .  and  that  is  what  some  of  the 


58         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1906 

lone  houses  in  the  deep  valleys  we  motored  through 
used  to  make  me  think  of !  ... 

I  am  meanwhile  yours  very  constantly, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  W.  E.  Norris 

16  Lewes  Crescent, 
Brighton. 

December  23rd,  1906. 
My  dear  Norris, 

I  think  it  was  from  here  I  wrote  you  last 
Christmas;  by  which  I  devoutly  hope  I  don't  give 
you  a  handle  for  saying:  "And  not  from  anywhere 
since  then."  But  I  am  but  too  aware  that  it  has 
been  at  the  best  a  hideous  record  of  silence  and 
apparent  .gloom,  and  also  fully  feel  that  after  such 
base  laideurs  of  behaviour  explanations,  attenua 
tions,  protestations,  are  as  the  mere  rustle  of  the 
wind  and  had  really  better  be  left  unuttered.  That 
only  adds  to  the  dark  burden  of  one's  consciousness 
when  one  does  write;  one  crawls  into  the  dear  out 
raged  presence  with  all  one's  imperfections  on  one's 
head.  So  I'll  indulge,  at  any  rate,  in  no  specific 
plea — but  only  in  that  general  one  of  the  fact  that 
the  letter-writing  faculty  within  me  has  become 
extinct  through  increasing  age,  infirmity,  embar 
rassment  (the  spelling  faculty,  even,  you  see,  al 
most  extinct,)  and  general  demoralization  and 
desolation.  Twenty  reproachful  •  spectres  rise  up 
before  me — out  of  whom  your  fine  sad  face  is  only 
the  most  awful.  All  I  can  say  for  myself  (and 
you)  is  that  among  these  feeble  reparations  that  I 
am  trying  to  make  in  the  way  of  "hardy  annuals" 
— hardy  in  the  sense,  I  fear,  of  a  sort  of  shameful 
brazenness  —  this  "Christmas  letter"  to  you  takes 
absolute  precedence.  I  wrote  indeed  to  Rhoda 


AET.  63  TO  W.  E.  NORRIS  59 

Broughton  a  couple  of  days  since,  from  town,  but 
that  was  a  melancholy  matter  on  the  occasion  of 
my  having  gone  up  to  poor  dear  Hamilton  Aide's 
memorial  service  (where  I  didn't  see  her,  though 
she  may  have  been  present,  and  of  which  I  thought 
she  would  care  for  some  little  account.  It  was  a 
very  beautiful  and  touching  musical  service.  But 
I  haven't  seen  her  for  a  long  time,  alas! — amid 
these  years  of  more  and  more  interspaced — and 
finished — occasions.)  Of  course  I  am  hoping  that 
this  will  lie  on  your  table  on  Xmas  morning — in 
all  sorts  of  charming  company,  and  not  before  and 
not  after.  But  it's  difficult  to  time  communica 
tions  at  .this  upheaved  season,  especially  from  an 
other  (non-London)  province,  and  I  trust  to  the 
happy  hazard,  though  still  a  little  ruffled  by  a  sense 
of  the  break-down  of  things  (the  "public  services") 
that  compelled  me  yesterday,  coming  down  here 
from  Victoria,  to  be  shoved  into  (as  the  only  place 
in  the  train)  the  small  connecting-space  between 
two  Pullmans,  where  I  stuck,  all  the  way,  in  a 
tight  bunch  of  five  or  six  other  men  and  three 
portmanteaux  and  boxes:  quite  the  sort  of  treat 
ment  (one's  nose  half  in  the  w.c.  included)  that  the 
English  traveller  writes  from  Italy  infuriated  let 
ters  to  the  Times  about.  I  figure  you  at  all  events 
exempt  from  any  indignity  of  movement  (and  the 
conditions  of  movement  nowadays  almost  all  in 
clude  indignity)  and  still  sitting  up  on  your  Tor 
quay  slope  as  on  a  mild  Olympus  and  with  this 
strife  of  circulating  humans  far  below  you.  But 
when  I  reflect  that  I  don't  know,  for  certain,  any 
of  your  actualities  I  reflect  with  a  crimson  coun 
tenance  on  the  months  that  have  elapsed.  I  have 
before  me  as  I  write  a  beautiful  letter  from  you, 
of  the  date  of  which  nothing  would  induce  me 
to  remind  you — but  that  is  not  quite  your  con 
temporary  history.  .  .  .  Putting  your  own  news 
at  its  quietest,  however,  my  own  runs  it  close — for 


60        LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1906 

save  for  this  small  episode  (a  stay  with  some  old 
and  intensely  tranquil  American  friends  established 
here  for  the  ending  of  their  days,)  and  putting 
aside  a  few  days  at  a  time  in  London,  which  I 
find  periodically  inevitable,  and  even  quite  like,  I 
haven't  stirred  for  ages  from  my  own  house,  the 
suitability  of  which  to  my  modest  scheme  of  ex 
istence  grows  fortunately  more  and  more  marked. 
I  spent  last  summer  there — the  most  beautiful  of 
one's  life  I  think — without  the  briefest  of  breaks — 
and  that  gregarious  time  is  the  one  at  which  I  like 
least  to  circulate.  The  little  place,  alas,  becomes 
itself — like  all  places  save  Torquay,  I  judge — more 
and  more  gregarious :  and  there  were  a  good  many 
days  when  even  my  own  small  premises  bristled 
too  much  with  the  invader.  But  there  is  a  great 
virtue  in  sitting  tight — you  sit  out  many  things; 
even  bores  are,  comparatively  speaking,  loose ;  and 
I  had  a  blest  sort  of  garden  (by  which  I'm  far 
from  meaning  gardening)  summer.  What  it  must 
have  been  beside  your  sapphire  sea!  I  return,  at 
any  rate,  in  a  few  days,  to  sit  tight  again,  till  early 
in  February,  when  there  are  reasons  for  my  prob 
ably  going  for  five  or  six  weeks  to  Paris ;  and  even 
possibly — or  impossibly — to  Rome;  one  of  the 
principal  of  these  being  that  the  prospect  fills  me 
with  a  blackness  of  horror  that  I  find  really  alarm 
ing  as  a  sign  of  moral  paralysis  and  abjection;  so 
that  I  ought  to  try  to  fly  in  the  face  of  it.  But 
I  shall  fly  at  the  best,  I  fear,  very  low!  .  .  . 

I  needn't  tell  you  how  much  I  hope  and  pray 
that  this  may  find  you,  as  they  say,  in  health. 
There's  an  icy  blast  here  to-day — yet  I  take  for 
granted  that  if  it  weren't  Sunday  you  would  be  do 
ing  something  very  prodigious  and  muscular  in  the 
teeth  of  it.  The  prize  (of  long  activity  and  sweet 
survival)  is  with  those  whose  hardness  is  greater 
than  other  hardnesses.  And  yours  is  greater  than 
that  of  the  sea-wave  and  all  the  rest  of  opposing 


ABT.  63  TO    W.    E.    NORRIS  61 

nature — though  I  make  this  imputation  only  on 
behalf  of  your  sporting  resources.  I  appeal  to  the 
softest  corner  of  the  softest  part  of  the  rest  of  you 
to  make  before  too  long  some  magnanimous  sign 
to  yours  very  constantly, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Thomas  Sergeant  Perry. 

Mr.  Perry,  whose  recollections  of  H.  J.  and  his  brothers 
at  Newport  have  been  read  on  an  early  page  of  these 
volumes,  was  at  this  time  living  in  Paris. 

Brighton. 
Boxing  Day,  1906. 

My  dear  Thomas, 

I  have  remained  silent — in  the  matter  of 
your  last  good  letter — under  a  great  stress  of  cor 
respondence  de  fin  d'annee;  which  you  on  your  side 
must  be  having  also  to  reckon  with.  The  end  is 
not  yet,  but  I  want  to  greet  you  without  a  more 
indecent  delay  and  to  impress  you  with  a  sense  of 
my  cordial  and  seasonable  sentiments;  such  as  you 
will  communicate,  please,  unreservedly  to  les  votres 
around  the  Xmastide  hearth.  I  am  spending  the 
so  equivocal  period  with  some  very  quiet  old  friends 
at  this  place,  and  I  write  this  in  presence  of  a  shin 
ing  silvery  shimmery  sea,  on  one  of  the  prettiest 
possible  south-coast  mornings.  It's  like  the  old 
Brighton  that  you  may  read  about  (Miss  Honey- 
man's)  in  the  early  chapters  of  the  "Newcomes." 
But  you  are  of  course  bathed,  in  Paris,  in  a  much 
more  sumptuous  splendour.  But  what  a  triste 
Nouvel  An  for  the  poor  foolish,  or  misguided 
church  (not)  of  France!  A  little  more  and  "we 
Protestants" — you  and  I — will  have  to  subscribe 
for  it.  Your  "Censeur"  was  very  welcome,  and  the 
portrait  of  Mme  Barboux  of  the  last  heart-breaking 


62      LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES  1906 

expertness.  But  somehow  these  things  are  all  pen, 
as  if  all  life  had  run  to  it — and  one  wonders  what 
becomes  of  the  rest  (of  consciousness — save  the 
literary) .  Yet  the  literary  breaks  down  with  them 
too  on  occasion — as  in  the  apparent  failure  to  dis 
cover  that  the  value  of  Shakespeare  is  that  of  the 
most  splendid  poetry,  as  expression,  that  ever  was 
on  earth,  and  that  they  are  reckoning  for  him  ap 
parently  as  by  the  langue  of  Sardou.  How  funnily 
solemn,  or  solemnly  funny,  the  little  Goncourt 
Academy! — yet  when  they  have  made  up  their 
mind  I  shall  like  to  hear  on  whom  and  what,  and 
you  must  tell  me,  and  I  will  get  the  book. 

Bill,  I  am  afraid  meanwhile,  will  have  been  ab 
sent  from  your  Yuletide  revels:  if  he  has  gone  to 
Geneva  (of  the  bise)  as  he  hinted  to  me  that  he 
might  and  as  I  don't  quite  envy  him.  But  a  cet 
age — !  ...  I  think  I  really  shall  see  you  dans 
le  courant  de  f  evrier.  I  presently  go  home  to  work 
toward  that  end,  ferme.  I  send  again  a  thou 
sand  friendships  to  Mrs.  Thomas  and  the  Miss 
Thomases  and  am  always  yours  and  theirs, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Gaillard  T.  Lapsley. 

Mr.  Lapsley,  now  settled  in  England,  had  become  the 
neighbour  (at  Cambridge)  of  Mr.  A.  C.  Benson  and  the 
present  editor — the  "Islander"  and  the  "Librarian"  of 
the  following  letter. 

16  Lewes  Crescent, 

Brighton. 
December  27th,  1906. 

My  dear,  dear  Gaillard, 

I  am  touched  almost  to  anguish  by  your 
beautiful  and  generous  letter,  and  lose  not  an  in 
stant  in  thanking  you  for  it  with  the  last  effusion. 
It  is  no  vain  figure  of  speech,  but  a  solemn,  an 


AET.  63    TO  GAILLARD  T.  LAPSLEY  63 

all-solemn  verity,  that  even  were  I  not  thus  bles 
sedly  hearing  from  you  at  this  felicitous  time,  I 
should  have  been,  within  the  next  two  or  three  days, 
writing  to  you,  and  I  had  formed  and  registered 
the  sacred  purpose  and  vow,  to  tell  you  that  really 
these  long  lapses  of  sight  and  sound  of  you  don't 
do  for  me  at  all  and  that  I  groan  over  the  strange 
fatality  of  this  last  so  persistent  failure — during 
long  months,  years! — of  my  power  to  become  in 
any  way  possessed  of  you.  (My  own  fault,  oh  yes 
— a  thousand  times;  for  which  I  bow  my  forehead 
in  the  dust. )  My  intense  respect  for  your  so  noble 
occupations  and  your  so  distinguished  "person 
ality"  have  had  a  good  deal  to  say  to  the  matter, 
moreover;  there  is  a  vulgar  untimeliness  of  ap 
proach  to  the  highly-devoted  and  the  deeply-clois 
tered,  of  which  I  have  always  hated  to  appear 
capable!  It  is  just  what  I  may,  however,  even 
now  be  guilty  of  if  I  put  you  the  crude  question 
of  whether  there  isn't  perhaps  any  moment  of  this 
January  when  you  could  come  to  me  for  a  couple 
of  deeply  amicable  days?  ...  I  don't  quite  know 
what  your  holidays  are,  nor  what  heroic  immersions 
in  scholastic  abysses  you  may  not  cultivate  the  de 
pressing  ideal  of  carrying  on  even  while  they  last, 
but  I  seem  to  reflect  that  you  never  will  be  able 
to  come  to  me  free  and  easy  (there's  a  sweet 
prophecy  for  you!)  and  that  my  only  course  there 
fore  is  to  tug  at  you,  blindfold,  through,  and  in 
spite  of,  your  tangle  of  silver  coils.  I  know,  no 
one  better,  that  it's  hateful  to  pay  visits,  and 
especially  winter  ones,  from  (far)  and  to  (far) 
'tother  side  of  town ;  but  to  brood  on  such  invidious 
truths  is  simply  to  plot  for  your  escaping  me 
altogether;  and  I  reflect  further  that  you  are,  with 
your  great  train-services,  decently  suburban  to 
London,  and  that  the  dear  old  4-28  from  Charing 
Cross  to  Rye  brings  you  down  in  exactly  two  not 
discomfortable  hours.  Also  my  poor  little  house 


64         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1906 

is  now  really  warm — even  hot;  I  put  in  very  ef 
fective  hot-water  pipes  only  this  autumn.  Ponder 
these  things,  my  dear  Gaillard — and  the  further 
fact  that  I  intensely  yearn  for  you! — struggle  with 
them,  master  them,  subjugate  them;  then  pick  out 
your  pair  of  days  (two  full  and  clear  ones  with 
me,  I  mean,  exclusive  of  journeys)  and  let  me 
know  that  you  arrive.  I  hate  to  worry  you  about 
it,  and  shall  understand  anything  and  everything; 
but  come  if  you  humanly  can. 

When  I  think  of  the  charm  of  possibly  taking 
up  with  you  by  the  Lamb  House  fire  the  various 
interesting  impressions,  allusions,  American  refer 
ences  and  memories  etc.,  with  which  your  letter  is 
so  richly  bedight,  I  kind  of  feel  that  you  must 
come,  to  tell  me  more  of  everything.  ...  So,  just 
yet,  I  shall  reserve  these  thrills;  for  I  feel  that  I 
shall  and  must,  by  hook  or  by  crook,  see  you.  I  ex 
pect  to  go  abroad  about  Feb.  5th  for  a  few  weeks — 
but  that  won't  prevent.  I  rejoice  to  hear  your 
news,  however  sketchy,  of  the  Islander  of  Ely  and 
the  Librarian  of  Magdalene.  Commend  me  as 
handsomely  as  possible  to  the  lone  Islander — how 
gladly  would  I  at  the  very  perfect  right  moment 
be  his  man  Friday,  or  Saturday,  or,  even  better, 
Sunday! — and  tell  Percy  Lubbock,  with  my  love, 
that  I  missed  him  acutely  the  other  week  at  Wind 
sor  (which  he  will  understand  and  perhaps  even 
believe. )  What  disconcerted  me  in  your  letter  was 
your  mention  of  your  having,  while  in  America, 
been  definitely  ill — a  proceeding  of  which  I  wholly 
disapprove.  I  desire  to  talk  to  you  about  that, 
too,  even  though  I  meanwhile  discharge  upon 
you,  my  dear  Gaillard,  the  abounding  sympathy  of 
yours  always  and  ever, 

HENRY  JAMES 


AET.  63  TO  BRUCE  PORTER  65 


To  Bruce  Porter. 

Mr.    Bruce   Porter   had    written    from    San   Francisco, 
describing  the  earthquake  of  the  preceding  spring. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

February  19th,  1907. 
My  dear  Bruce  Porter, 

I  have  had  from  you  a  very  noble  and 
beautiful  letter,  which  has  given  me  exceeding 
great  joy,  and  which  I  have  only  not  sooner  thanked 
you  for — well,  by  reason  of  many  interruptions 
and  preoccupations — mainly  those  resulting  from 
my  being  in  London  (the  hourly  importunate) 
when  it  came  to  me;  at  which  seasons,  and  during 
which  sojourns,  I  always  put  off  as  much  corre 
spondence  as  possible  till  I  get  back  to  this  com 
parative  peace.  (I  returned  here  but  three  days 
since.)  How  shall  I  tell  you,  at  any  rate,  today, 
how  your  letter  touches  and  even,  as  it  were,  re 
lieves  me?  I  had  felt  like  such  a  Backward  Brute 
in  writing  mine,  but  now  in  communication  with 
your  treasures  of  indulgence  and  generosity,  I  feel 
only  your  admirable  virtue  and  the  high  price  I 
set  upon  your  friendship.  So  I  thank  you,  all  ten 
derly,  and  assure  you  that  you  have  poured  balm 
on  much  of  my  anxiety,  not  to  say  on  my  shame. 
Your  account  of  those  unimaginable  weeks  of  your 
great  crisis  are  of  a  thrilling  and  uplifting  interest 
— and  yet  everything  remains  unimaginable  to 
me — as  to  the  sense  of  your  whole  actual  situation ; 
and  the  lurid  newspapers,  on  all  this,  do  nothing 
but  darken  and  distract  my  vision.  I  hope  you  are 
living  in  less  of  a  pandemonium  than  they,  basest 
afflictions  of  our  afflicted  age,  give  you  out  to  be- 
but  verily  the  bridge  of  comprehension  is  strained 
and  shaky  and  impassable  between  this  little  old- 
world  russet  shore  and  your  vertiginous  cosmic 


66        LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1907 

coast.  Let  me  cling  therefore  to  you,  dear  Bruce 
Porter,  personally,  as  to  the  friend  of  those  three 
or  four  all  but  fabulous  antediluvian  days,  and 
keep  my  hands  on  you  tight,  till,  by  gentle  insistent 
pressure,  I  have  made  you  yield  to  that  delightful 
possibility  of  your  perhaps  at  some  nearish  day 
presenting  yourself  here.  You  speak  of  it  as  a  dis 
cussable  thing — it's  the  cream  of  your  letter.  Let 
me  just  say  once  for  all  you  shall  have  the  very 
eagerest  and  intensest  welcome.  Heaven  there 
fore  speed  the  day.  I  go  to  the  continent  for  a 
few  weeks — eight  or  ten,  probably  at  most — a  fort 
night  hence ;  but  return  after  that  to  be  here  in  the 
most  continuous  fashion  for  months  and  months 
to  come — all  summer  and  autumn.  You  are  vividly 
interesting  too  on  the  subject  of  Fanny  Steven 
son  and  her  situation — and  your  picture  is  filled 
out  a  little  by  my  hearing  of  her  as  in  a  rather 
obscure  and  inaccessible  town  "somewhere  on  the 
Riviera";  communicating  with  a  friend  or  two  in 
London  in  an  elusive  and  deprecative  fashion — 
withholding  her  address  so  as  not  to  be  overtaken 
or  met  with  (apparently.)  Poor  lady,  poor  bar 
barous  and  merely  instinctive  lady — ah,  what  a 
tangled  web  we  weave!  I  probably  shall  fail  of 
seeing  her,  and  yet,  with  a  sneaking  kindness  for 
her  that  I  have,  shall  be  sorry  wholly  to  lose  her. 
She  won't,  I  surmise,  come  to  England.  But  if 
I  see  you  here  I  shall  repine  at  nothing.  Do  man 
age  to  be  sustained  for  the  gallant  pilgrimage — 
and  do  let  it  count  a  little,  for  that,  that  I  am  here, 
my  dear  Bruce  Porter,  ever  so  clingingly  and  con 
stantly  yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


AET.  63     TO  MISS  GRACE  NORTON  67 


To  Miss  Grace  Norton. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
March  5th,  1907. 

Dearest  Grace, 

Hideous  as  is  really  the  time  that  has  elapsed 
since  I  last  held  any  communication  with  you  (on 
that  torrid  July  3d,  p.m.,  in  Kirkland  St.— I  won't 
name  the  year!)  it  has  seemed  to  me  extraordinarily 
brief  and  has  in  fact  passed  like  a  flash!    Measured 
by  the  calendar  it's  incredible— measured  by  my 
sense  of  the  way  the  months  whizz  by  (more  and 
more  like  the  telegraph-posts  at  the  window  of  the 
train,)  it  has  been  a  simple  good  "run"  from  the 
eve  of  my  leaving  America  to  the  present  moment. 
I  came  straight  back  here— to  a  great  monotony 
and  regularity   and  tranquillity   of  life    (on  the 
whole,)  and  haven't  had  really  ( and  shouldn't  have, 
didn't  I  begin  to  count!)    any  of  the  conscious 
desolation  of  having  drifted  away  from  you.    How 
ever,   beginning  to  count  makes   it  another   and 
rather  horrible  matter— or  would  make  it  so  if  you 
and  I  ever  counted  (in  the  dreary  way  of  "times" 
of  writing,)    or  ever  had,  or  ever  will.     At  the 
same  time  I  yearn  to  hear  from  you,  and  it  may 
increase  my  chance  of  that  boon  if  I  tell  you  with 
all  urgency  how  much  I  do.     On  that  side,  though 
you,  through  your  habitual  magnanimity,  won't 
"mind"  my  long  silence  unduly,  I  mind  it  myself, 
with  this  very  first  word  of  my  breaking  it.     Be 
cause  I'm  talking  with  you  now  again,  and  that 
brings  back  so  many,  too  many  things;  and  to  do 
so   seems  the  pleasantest   and   dearest   and  most 
natural  thing  in  the  world.     I  leave  this  place  to 
morrow  for  Paris— that  is  sleep  at  Dover— but  an 
hour  and  a  half  hence— and  go  farther  the  next 
day;  which  is  the  first  time  I've  stirred  (except  for 
an  occasional  week  in  London)  since  I  last  stirred 


68         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1007 

out  of  sight  of  you.  I've  been  for  a  long  time  un 
der  the  promise  of  going  over  to  see  William's  Bill, 
who  is  working  tooth  and  nail,  to  every  appear 
ance,  at  Julian's  studio — .  .  .  If  I  can  I  shall  dash 
down  to  Italy — to  Florence  and  Venice — for  a 
short  spell  before  restoration — to  this  domicile — the 
last  time,  I  daresay,  that  I  shall  ever  brave  the 
distinctly  enfeebled  spell  (as  I  last  felt  it  to  be — 
seven  years  ago)  of  those  places;  so  utterly  the 
prey  of  the  Barbarian  now  that  if  you  still  ever 
yearn  for  them  take  an  easy  comfort  and  thank 
your  stars  that  you  knew  them  in  the  less  blighted 
and  dishonoured  time.  It  is  very  singular  to  me, 
living  here  (in  this  comparatively  old-world  corner 
which  has  nothing  else  but  its  own  little  immemorial 
blots  and  vulgarisms — besides  all  its  great  merits) 
to  find  myself  plunged  into  the  strain  of  the  rank 
est  and  most  promiscuous  actuality  as  soon  as, 
crossing  to  the  Continent,  I  direct  myself  to  the 
shrines  of  a  superior  antiquity.  One  is  so  out  of 
the  stream  here  that  one  almost  wholly  forgets  it 
— and  then  it  is  incongruously  the  most  sacred 
pilgrimages  that  most  vociferously  remind  one — 
because  (to  put  it  as  gracefully  as  possible)  most 
cosmopolitanly.  "Left  to  myself"  I  really  think  I 
should  scarce  ever  budge  from  here  again — unless 
to  go  back  to  the  U.S.,  which,  honestly,  I  should 
like  almost  as  much  as  I  should  (in  some  connec 
tions — the  "travelling"  above  all)  dread  it.  But 
the  dread  wouldn't  be  the  same  dread  of  the  Ameri 
can-Anglican  and  German  Italy.  These  will  strike 
you  as  cheerful  sentiments  for  the  eve  of  a  pleasure- 
trip  abroad,  and  I  shall  feel  better  when  I've 
started;  but  even  so  the  travel-impulse  (which  I've 
had  almost  no  opportunity  in  my  life  really  to 
gratify)  is  extinct  as  from  inanition  (and  personal 
antiquity!)  and  above  all,  more  and  more,  the  only 
way  I  care  to  travel  is  by  reading.  To  stay  at 
home  and  read  is  more  and  more  my  ideal — and 


AET.  63     TO  MISS  GRACE  NORTON  69 

it's  one  that  you  have  beautifully  realized.  I  think 
it  was  the  sense  of  all  that  it  has  so  admirably  done 
for  you  that  confirmed  me  while  I  was  with  you 
in  my  high  estimation  of  it.  Great,  every  way, 
dear  Grace,  and  all -exemplary,  I  thought  the  dig 
nity  and  coherency  and  benignity  of  your  life — 
long  after  beholding  it  as  it  has  taken  me  (by  the 
tiresome  calendar  again!)  to  make  you  this  declara 
tion.  I  at  any  rate  have  the  greatest  satisfaction 
in  the  thought — the  fireside  vision — of  your  still 
and  always  nobly  leading  it.  I  don't  know,  and 
how  should  I?  much  about  you  in  detail — but  I 
think  I  have  a  kind  of  instinct  of  how  the  side- 
brush  of  the  things  that  I  do  get  in  a  general  way 
a  reverberation  of  touches  and  affects  you,  and  as 
in  one  way  or  another  there  seems  to  have  been 
plenty  of  the  stress  and  strain  and  pain  of  life  on 
the  circumference  (and  even  some  of  it  at  the  cen 
tre,  as  it  were)  of  your  circle,  I've  not  been  with 
out  feeling  (and  responding  to,)  I  boldly  say, 
some  of  your  vibrations.  I  hope  at  least  the  most 
acute  of  them  have  proceeded  from  causes  present 
ing  for  you — well,  what  shall  I  say  ? — an  interest  \  \ 
Even  the  most  worrying  businesses  often  have  one 
— but  there  are  sides  of  them  that  we  could  dis 
cover  in  talk  over  the  fire  but  that  I  don't  appeal 
to  you  lucidly  to  portray  to  me.  Besides,  I  can 
imagine  them  exquisitely — as  well  as  where  they 
fail  of  that  beguilement,  and  believe  me,  therefore, 
I  am  living  with  you,  as  I  write,  quite  as  much  as 
if  I  made  out — as  I  used  to — by  your  pharos-look 
ing  lamplight  through  your  ample  and  lucid  win 
dow-pane,  that  you  were  sitting  "in,"  as  they  say 
here,  and  were  thereupon  planning  an  immediate 
invasion.  I  have  given  intense  ear  to  every  breath 
of  indication  about  Charles  and  his  condition,  and 
in  particular  to  the  appearance  that,  so  far  as  I 
understand,  he  has  been  presiding  and  dignifying, 
as  he  alone  remains  to  have  done,  the  Longfellow 


70         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1907 

centenary — a  symptom,  as  it  has  seemed  to  me,  of 
very  handsome  vitality.  .  .  . 

I  have  been  very  busy  all  these  last  months  in 
raising  my  Productions  for  a  (severely-sifted) 
Collective  and  Definitive  Edition — of  which  I  even 
spoke  to  you,  I  think,  when  I  saw  you  last,  as  it 
was  then  more  or  less  definitely  planned.  Then 
hitches  and  halts  supervened — the  whole  matter  be 
ing  complicated  by  the  variety  and  the  conflict  of 
my  scattered  publishers,  till  at  last  the  thing  is  on 
the  right  basis  (in  the  two  countries — for  it  has 
all  had  to  be  brought  about  by  quite  separate  arts 
here  and  in  America,)  and  a  "handsome" — I  hope 
really  handsome  and  not  too  cheap — in  fact  suffi 
ciently  dear — array  will  be  the  result — owing  much 
to  close  amendment  (and  even  "rewriting")  of  the 
four  earliest  novels  and  to  illuminatory  classifi 
cation,  collocation,  juxtaposition  and  separation 
through  the  whole  series.  The  work  on  the  earlier 
novels  has  involved  much  labour — to  the  best  effect 
for  the  vile  things,  I'm  convinced;  but  the  real 
tussle  is  in  writing  the  Prefaces  (to  each  vol.  or 
book,)  which  are  to  be  long — very  long! — and 
loquacious — and  competent  perhaps  to  pousser  a 
la  vente.  The  Edition  is  to  be  of  23  vols.  and  there 
are  to  be  some  15  Prefaces  (as  some  of  the  books 
are  in  two,)  and  twenty-three  lovely  frontispieces 
— all  of  which  I  have  this  winter  very  ingeniously 
called  into  being;  so  that  they  at  least  only  await 
"process"  reproduction.  The  prefaces,  as  I  say, 
are  difficult  to  do — but  I  have  found  them  of  a  jolly 
interest;  and  though  I  am  not  going  to  let  you 
read  one  of  the  fictions  themselves  over  I  shall  ex 
pect  you  to  read  all  the  said  Introductions.  Thus, 
my  dear  Grace,  do  I — not  at  all  artlessly — prattle 
to  you;  artfully,  on  the  contrary,  toward  casting 
some  spell  of  chatter  on  yourself.  *  .  .  Meanwhile 
the  Irving  Street  echoes  that  have  come  to  me  have 
been  of  the  din  of  voices  and  the  affluence  of  strang- 


An.  63     TO  MISS  GRACE  NORTON  71 

ers  and  the  conflict  of  nationalities  and  the  rush  of 
everything.  I  don't  quite  distinguish  you  in  the 
thick  of  it,  but  I  suppose  Shady  Hill  has  had  its 
share.  Will  you  give  my  tender  love  there  when 
you  next  go?  Will  you  kindly  keep  a  little  in  the 
dark  for  the  present  my  fond  chatter  about  my 
poor  Edition?  Above  all,  dearest  Grace,  will  you 
believe  me,  through  thick  and  thin,  your  ever  de 
voted  old  friend, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  William  James,  junior. 

Grand  Hotel,  Pau. 

March  26,  1907. 
Dearest  Bill, 

This  is  just  a  word  to  tell  you  that  your 
poor  old  far-flying  Uncle  is  safe  and  sound  and 
greatly  enjoying  [himself],  so  far,  after  etapes 
consisting  of  Bois,  Poictiers,  and  Bordeaux,  with 
wonderful  minor  stops,  dejeuners  and  other  im 
pressions  in  between.  We  got  here  last  night— 
into  the  balmiest,  tepidest,  dustiest  south,  and  stay 
three  days  or  so,  for  excursions,  going  probably 
after  today's  luncheon  to  Lourdes  and  back.  This 
large,  smooth  old  France  is  wonderful  (wisely 
seen,  as  we  are  seeing  it,)  and  I  know  it  already 
much  more  infinitely  well.  The  motor  is  a  magical 
marvel — discreetly  and  honourably  used,  as  we  are 
using  it — and  my  hosts  are  full  of  amenity,  sym 
pathy,  appreciation,  etc.  (as  well  as  of  wondrous 
other  servanted  and  avant-courier'd  arts  of  travel, ) 
so  that  we  are  an  excellent  combination  and  most 
happy  family  —  including  our  most  admirable 
American  chauffeur  from  Lee,  Mass.,  whose  native 
Yankee  saneness  and  intelligence  (projected  into 
these  unprecedented  conditions)  makes  me  as  proud 
of  him  as  he  is  of  his  Panhard  car.  On  Thursday 


72        LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1007 

or  Friday  (at  furthest)  we  turn  "her"  head  to 
Paris — but  of  course  with  other  stops  and  impres 
sions — thougK  none,  I  think,  of  more  than  one 
night.  Don't  dream  of  troubling  to  write — I  will 
write  again  as  we  draw  nearer.  I  hope  these  ef 
florescent  days  (if  you  have  them)  don't  turn  your 
stomach  too  much  against  the  thick  taste  of  the 
Julian  broth.  I  already  long  to  see  you  again. 
Ever  your  affectionate 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Howard  Sturgis. 

The  plan  of  approaching  Italy  through  South  Germany 
and  Austria  was  not  carried  out.  He  presently  went 
straight  from  Paris  to  Rome. 

58  Rue  de  Varenne,  Paris. 

April  13th,  1907. 
Dearest  Howard, 

I  find  your  beautiful  tragic  wail  on  my  re 
turn  from  a  wondrous,  miraculous  motor  tour  of 
three  weeks  and  a  day  with  these  admirable  friends 
of  ours,  who  so  serve  one  up  all  the  luxuries  of  the 
season  and  all  the  ripe  fruits  of  time  that  one's 
overloaded  plate  will  hold.  We  got  back  from — 
from  everywhere,  literally — last  night ;  and  in  pres 
ence  of  a  table  groaning  under  arrears  and  calen 
dars  and  other  stationery  I  can  but,  as  it  were, 
fold  you  in  my  arms.  You  talk  of  sad  and  fear 
ful  things  .  .  .  and  I  don't  know  what  to  say  to 
you  (at  least  in  this  poor  inky,  scratchy  way.) 
What  I  should  like  to  be  able  to  say  is  that  I  will 
come  down  to  Rome  and  see  you  even  now;  but 
this  alas  is  not  in  my  power  without  my  altering  all 
sorts  of  other  pressing  arrangements  and  combina 
tions  already  made.  I  do  hope  to  go  to  Rome  for 
a  little — a  very  little — stay  later;  but  not  before 


AET.  63         TO  HOWARD  STURGIS  73 

the  middle  or  20th  of  May;  a  time — a  generally 
emptier,  quieter  time — I  greatly  prefer  there  to 
any  other.  It  is  of  extreme  importance  to  me  to 
be  (to  remain)  in  Paris  till  May  1st — I  haven't 
been  here  for  years  and  shall  probably  never  once 
again  be  here  (or  "come  abroad"  once  again,  like 
you)  for  the  rest  of  my  natural  life.  Ergo  I  am 
taking  what  there  is  of  it  for  me — I  can't  afford, 
as  it  were,  not  to.  And  I  have  made  my  plans 
(if  they  hold)  for  approaching  Italy  by  South 
Germany,  Vienna,  Trieste,  Venice  &c. — all  of  which 
will  bring  me  to  Rome  by  the  20th  of  May  about, 
when,  I  fear,  you  will  well  nigh — or  certainly — 
have  cleared  out  altogether.  From  Rome  and 
Florence  ...  I  shall  return  straight  home — where 
at  least,  then,  I  must  infallibly  see  you.  Or  shall 
you  pass  through  this  place — homeward — before 
May  1st?  The  gentlest  of  lionesses  bids  me  tell 
you  what  a  tenderest  welcome  you  would  have  from 
them.  Hold  up  your  heart,  meanwhile,  and  re 
member,  for  God's  sake,  that  there  is  a  point  be 
yond  which  the  follies  and  infirmities  of  our  friends 
and  our  proches  have  no  right  to  ravage  and  wreck 
our  own  independence  of  soul.  That  quantity  is 
too  precious  a  contribution  to  the  saving  human 
sum  of  good,  of  lucidity,  and  we  are  responsible 
for  the  cntretien  of  it.  So  keep  yours,  shake  yours, 
up — well  up — my  dearest  friend,  and  to  this  end 
believe  in  your  admirable  human  use.  To  be 
"crushed"  is  to  be  of  no  use;  and  I  for  one  insist 
that  you  shall  be  of  some,  and  the  most  delightful, 
to  me.  Feel  everything,  tant  que  vous  voudrez— 
but  then  soar  superior  and  don't  leave  tatters  of 
your  precious  person  on  every  bush  that  happens 
to  bristle  with  all  the  avidities  and  egotisms.  We 
shall  judge  it  all  sanely  and  taste  it  all  wisely  and 
talk  of  it  all  (even)  thrillingly — and  profitably— 
yet;  and  I  depend  on  your  keeping  that  appoint 
ment  with  me.  This  is  all,  dearest  Howard,  now. 


74         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1907 

I  almost  blush  to  break  through  your  obsessions 
to  the  point  of  saying  that  my  three  weeks  of  really 
seeing  this  large  incomparable  France  in  our 
friend's  chariot  of  fire  has  been  almost  the  time 
of  my  life.  It's  the  old  travelling-carriage  way 
glorified  and  raised  to  the  100th  power.  Will  you 
very  kindly  say  to  Maud  Story  for  me,  with  my 
love,  that  I  am  coming  to  Rome  very  nearly  all  to 
see  her.  I  bless  your  companions  and  am  your  tout 
devoue 

HENKY  JAMES. 


To  Howard  Sturgis. 

From  Rome  H.  J.  went  to  Cernitoio,  Mr.  Edward  Bolt's 
villa  near  Vallombrosa. 

Hotel  de  Russie,  Rome. 

May  29th,  1907. 
Dearest  Howard, 

I've  been  disgustingly  silent  in  spite  of  your 
so  good  prompt,  blessed  letter — but  the  waters  of 
Rome  have  been  closing  over  my  head,  for  I  have, 
each  day,  a  good  part  of  each,  something  urgent 
and  imperative  to  do,  "for  myself,"  as  it  were — 
and  everything  the  hours  and  the  "people"  bring 
forth  has  to  be  crowded  into  too  scant  a  margin; 
with  a  consequent  sensation  of  breathlessness  that 
ill  consorts  alike  with  my  figure,  my  years  and  my 
inclinations.  I  am  "sitting  for  my  bust,"  into  the 
bargain — to  Hendrik  Andersen  (it  will  be,  I  think, 
better  than  some  other  such  work  of  his,)  and  that 
makes  practically  a  great  hole  of  two  hours  and 
a  half  in  the  day — without  which,  in  truth  (the 
promise  to  hold  out  to  the  end  of  the  ordeal,)  I 
should  already  have  broken  away  from  this  now 
very  highly-developed  heat  and  dust  and  glare. 
My  days  "abroad"  are  violently  shrinking — I  am 
long  since  due  at  home;  and  my  yearning  for  a 


AET.  64         TO  HOWARD  STURGIS  75 

damp  grey  temperate  clime  hourly  develops.  How 
ever,  I  didn't  mean  to  pour  forth  this  plaintive 
flood — but  rather  to  take  a  fine  healthy  jolly  tone 
over  the  fact  of  your  own  so  happily  achieved  (I 
trust)  liberation  from  the  Roman  yoke  and  your 
probable  inhalation  at  this  moment  of  the  fresh 
air  of  the  summits  and  of  the  tonic  influence  of 
admirable  friends.  Need  I  say  that  I  number  poor 
dear  deafened  Rhoda's  Florentine  contact  as  among 
the  stimulating? — since  it  surely  must  take  more 
than  deafness,  must  take  utter  and  cataclysmal 
dumbness — and  I'm  not  sure  even  that  would  get 
the  better  of  her  practical  acuity — to  make  her  fall 
from  the  tonic.  But  I'm  very  sorry — I  mean  for 
her  I  trust  temporary  trouble — and  if  I  but  knew 
where  she  is — which  you  don't  mention — and  when 
departing,  or  how  long  staying,  would  reach  her 
if  I  might.  I  cherish  the  thought  of  getting  off 
Tuesday  at  very  latest — if  I  return  intact  from 
a  long  motor-day  that  awaits  me  at  the  hands  of 
the  Filippo  Filippis  on  Saturday — as  I  believe. 
I  drove  with  Mrs.  Mason  out  yesterday  afternoon 
to  the  Abbotts'  villa — that  is  a  very  charming  late 
afternoon  tea-garden,  and  they  told  me  you  are 
soon  to  have  them  at  Cernitoio.  Expansive  (not 
to  say  expensive)  and  illimitable  you!  All  this 
time  I  don't  tell  you — tell  Mildred  Seymour — a 
tenth  of  the  comfort  I  am  deriving  amid  continued 
tension  from  the  sense  that  her  (and  your  bow  is 
for  the  time  unstrung  and  hung  up  for  the  Val- 
lombrosa  pines  to  let  the  mountain-breeze  loosely 
play  with  it.  ...  I  expect  to  be  here  till  Tuesday 
a.m. — but  I  see  I've  said  so.  You  shall  then,  and 
so  shall  Edward  Boit  (to  whom  and  his  girls  I  send 
tanti  saluti,  as  well  as  to  brave  and  beneficent 
Mr.  William)  have  further  news  of  yours,  my 
dear  Howard,  ever  affectionately, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


76         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1907 


To  Madame  Wagniere. 

The  name  of  this  correspondent  recalls  a  meeting  at 
Florence,  described  in  an  early  letter  (vol.  i,  p.  23). 
Madame  Wagniere  (born  Huntington)  was  now  living  in 
Switzerland. 

Palazzo  Barbaro, 

Venice. 

June  23rd,  1907. 
Dear  Laura  Wagniere, 

I  have  waited  since  getting  your  good  note 
to  have  the  right  moment  and  right  light  for  cast 
ing  the  right  sort  of  longing  lingering  look  on  the 
little  house  with  the  "Ghardinetto"  on  the  Canal 
Grande,  to  the  right  of  Guggenheim  as  you  face 
Guggenheim.  I  hung  about  it  yesterday  after 
noon  in  the  gondola  with  Mrs.  Curtis,  and  we  both 
thought  it  very  charming  and  desirable,  only  that 
she  has  (perhaps  a  little  vaguely)  heard  it  spoken 
of  as  "damp"  which  I  confess  it  looks  to  me  just  a 
trifle.  However,  this  may  be  the  vainest  of  calum 
nies.  It  does  look  expensive  and  also  a  trifle  con 
tracted,  and  is  at  present  clearly  occupied  and  with 
no  outward  trace  of  being  to  let  about  it  at  all. 
For  myself,  in  this  paradise  of  great  household 
spaces  (I  mean  Venice  generally),  I  kind  of  feel 
that  even  the  bribe  of  the  Canal  Grande  and  a 
giardinetto  together  wouldn't  quite  reconcile  me 
to  the  purgatory  of  a  very  small,  really  (and  not 
merely  relatively)  small  house.  .  .  .  Mrs.  Curtis 
is  eloquent  on  the  sacrifices  one  must  make  (to  a 
high  rent  here)  if  one  must  have,  for  "smartness," 
the  "Canal  Grande"  at  any  price.  She  makes  me 
feel  afresh  what  I've  always  felt,  that  what  I 
should  probably  do  with  my  own  available  nine- 
pence  would  be  to  put  up  with  some  large  marble 
halls  in  some  comparatively  modest  or  remote 
locality,  especially  della  parte  di  fondamenta  nuova, 


64    TO  MADAME  WAGNI£RE         77 

etc. ;  that  is,  so  I  got  there  air  and  breeze  and  light 
and  pulizia  and  a  dozen  other  conveniences  1  In 
fine,  the  place  you  covet  is  no  doubt  a  dear  little 
"fancy"  place;  but  as  to  the  question  of  "coming 
to  Venice"  if  one  can,  I  have  but  a  single  passion 
ate  emotion,  a  thousand  times  Yes!  It  would  be 
for  me,  I  feel,  in  certain  circumstances  (were  I 
free,  with  a  hundred  other  facts  of  my  life  differ 
ent,  )  the  solution  of  all  my  questions,  and  the  con 
solation  of  my  declining  years.  Never  has  the 
whole  place  seemed  to  me  sweeter,  dearer,  diviner. 
It  leaves  everything  else  out  in  the  cold.  I  wish 
I  could  dream  of  coming  to  me  mettre  dans  mes 
meubles  (except  that  my  meubles  would  look  so 
awful  here!)  beside  you.  I  presume  to  enter  into 
it  with  a  yearning  sympathy.  Happy  you  to  be 
able  even  to  discuss  it.  ... 

This  place  and  this  large  cool  upper  floor  of  the 
Barbaro,  with  all  the  space  practically  to  myself, 
and  draughts  and  scirocco  airs  playing  over  me 
indecently  undressed,  is  more  than  ever  delicious 
and  unique.  .  .  .  The  breath  of  the  lagoon  still 
plays  up,  but  I  mingle  too  much  of  another  fluid 
with  my  ink,  and  I  have  no  more  clothes  to  take 
off.  ...  I  greet  affectionately,  yes  affectionately, 
kind  Henry,  and  the  exquisite  gold-haired  maiden, 
and  I  am,  dear  Laura  Wagniere,  your  very  faith 
ful  old  friend, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


78         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1907 


To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

The  Vicomte  Robert  d'Humieres,  poet  and  essayist,  fell 
in  action  in  France,  April  26,  1915. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
August  llth,  1907. 

My  dear  Edith  and  my  dear  Edward, 

The  d'Humieres  have  just  been  lunching 
with  me,  and  that  has  so  reknotted  the  silver  cord 
that  stretched  so  tense  from  the  first  days  of  last 
March  to  the  first  of  those  of  May — wasn't  it? — 
that  I  feel  it  a  folly  in  addition  to  a  shame  not  yet 
to  have  written  to  you  (as  I  have  been  daily  and 
hourly  yearning  to  do)  ever  since  my  return  from 
Italy  about  a  month  ago.  You  flung  me  the  hand 
kerchief,  Edith,  just  at  that  time — literally  cast 
it  at  my  feet:  it  met  me,  exactly,  bounding — re 
bounding — from  my  hall-table  as  I  recrossed  my 
threshold  after  my  long  absence ;  which  fact  makes 
this  tardy  response,  I  am  well  aware,  all  the  more 
graceless.  And  then  came  the  charming  little  pic 
ture-card  of  the  poor  Lamb  House  hack  grinding 
out  his  patient  prose  under  your  light  lash  and 
dear  Walter  B.'s — which  should  have  accelerated 
my  production  to  the  point  of  its  breaking  in  waves 
at  your  feet:  and  yet  it's  only  to-night  that  my 
overburdened  spirit — pushing  its  way,  ever  since 
my  return,  through  the  accumulations  and  arrears, 
in  every  sort,  of  absence — puts  pen  to  paper  for 
your  especial  benefit — if  benefit  it  be.  The  charm 
ing  d'Humieres  both,  as  I  say,  touring — training 
— in  England,  through  horrid  wind  and  weather, 
with  a  bonne  grace  and  a  wit  and  a  Parisianism 
worthy  of  a  better  cause,  amiably  lunched  with  me 
a  couple  of  days  since  on  their  way  from  town  to 
Folkestone,  and  so  back  to  Plassac  (don't  you 
like  "Plassac,"  down  in  our  dear  old  Gascony?) 


AET.  64  TO  MRS.  WHARTON  79 

the  seat  of  M.  de  Dampierre — to  whom,  a  ce  qu'il 
parait,  that  day  at  luncheon  we  were  all  exquisitely 
sympathetic!  Well,  it  threw  back  the  bridge  across 
the  gulfs  and  the  months,  even  to  the  very  spot 
where  the  great  nobly-clanging  glass  door  used  to 
open  to  the  arrested,  the  engulfing  and  disgorging 
car — for  we  sat  in  my  little  garden  here  and  talked 
about  you  galore  and  kind  of  made  plans  (wild 
vain  dreams,  though  I  didn't  let  them  see  it!)  for 
our  all  somehow  being  together  again.  .  .  .  But 
oh,  I  should  like  to  remount  the  stream  of  time 
much  further  back  than  their  passage  here — if  it 
weren't  (as  it  somehow  always  is  when  I  get  at 
urgent  letters)  ever  so  much  past  midnight.  It 
was  only  with  my  final  return  hither  that  my  deep 
draught  of  riotous  living  came  to  an  end,  and  as 
the  cup  had  originally  been  held  to  my  lips  all  by 
your  hands  I  somehow  felt  in  presence  of  your 
interest  and  sympathy  up  to  the  very  last,  and  as 
if  you  absolutely  should  have  been  avertie  from 
day  to  day — I  did  the  matter  that  justice  at  least. 
Too  much  of  the  story  has  by  this  time  dropped 
out ;  but  there  are  bits  I  wish  I  could  save  for  you. 
.  .  .  But  I  must  break  off — it's  1.15  a.m.! 

Aug.  12th.  I  wrote  you  last  from  Rome,  I 
think — didn't  I  ?  but  it  was  after  that  that  I  heard 
of  your  having  had  at  the  last  awful  delays  and 
complications,  awful  s£n7c£-botherations,  over  your 
sailing.  I  knew  nothing  of  them  at  the  time.  .  .  . 
I  can  only  hope  that  the  horrid  memory  of  it  has 
been  brushed  and  blown  away  for  you  by  the  wind 
of  your  American  kilometres.  I  remained  in  Rome 
— for  myself — a  goodish  while  after  last  writing 
you,  and  there  were  charming  moments,  faint  re 
verberations  of  the  old-time  refrains — with  a  happy 
tendency  of  the  superfluous,  the  incongruous  crew 
to  take  its  departure  as  the  summer  came  on;  yet 
I  feel  that  I  shouldn't  care  if  I  never  saw  the  per 
verted  place  again,  were  it  not  for  the  memory  of 


80         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1907 

four  or  five  adorable  occasions — charming  chances 
— enjoyed  by  the  bounty  of  the  Filippis.  .  .  . 
My  point  is  that  they  carried  me  in  their  won 
drous  car  (he  drove  it  himself  all  the  way  from 
Paris  via  Macerata,  and  with  four  or  five  more 
picked-up  inmates!)  first  to  two  or  three  adorable 
Roman  excursions — to  Fiumicino,  e.g.,  where  we 
crossed  the  Tiber  on  a  medieval  raft  and  then  had 
tea — out  of  a  Piccadilly  tea-basket — on  the  cool 
sea-sand,  and  for  a  divine  day  to  Subiaco,  the 
unutterable,  where  I  had  never  been;  and  then, 
second  down  to  Naples  (where  we  spent  two  days) 
and  back;  going  by  the  mountains  (the  valleys 
really)  and  Monte  Cassino,  and  returning  by  the 
sea — i.e.  by  Gaeta,  Terracina,  the  Pontine  Marshes 
and  the  Castelli — quite  an  ineffable  experience. 
This  brought  home  to  me  with  an  intimacy  and  a 
penetration  unprecedented  how  incomparably  the 
old  coquine  of  an  Italy  is  the  most  beautiful  coun 
try  in  the  world — of  a  beauty  ( and  an  interest  and 
complexity  of  beauty)  so  far  beyond  any  other 
that  none  other  is  worth  talking  about.  The  day 
we  came  down  from  Posilipo  in  the  early  June 
morning  (getting  out  of  Naples  and  round  about 
by  that  end — the  road  from  Capua  on,  coming,  is 
archi-damnable)  is  a  memory  of  splendour  and 
style  and  heroic  elegance  I  never  shall  lose — and 
never  shall  renew!  No — you  will  come  in  for  it 
and  Cook  will  picture  it  up,  bless  him,  repeatedly 
— but  I  have  drunk  and  turned  the  glass  upside 
down — or  rather  I  have  placed  it  under  my  heel 
and  smashed  it — and  the  Gipsy  life  with  it! — for 
ever.  (Apropos  of  smashes,  two  or  three  days 
after  we  had  crossed  the  level  crossing  of  Caianello, 
near  Caserta,  seven  Neapolitan  "smarts"  were  all 
killed  dead — and  this  by  no  coming  of  the  train, 
but  simply  by  furious  reckless  driving  and  a  de 
viation,  a  slip,  that  dashed  them  against  a  rock 
and  made  an  instant  end.  The  Italian  driving  is 


AET.  64  TO  MRS.  WHARTON  81 

crapulous,  and  the  roads  mostly  not  good  enough. ) 
But  I  mustn't  expatiate.  I  wish  I  were  younger. 
But  for  that  matter  the  "State  Line"  would  do 
me  well  enough  this  evening — for  it's  again  the 
stroke  of  midnight.  If  it  weren't  I  would  tell  you 
more.  Yes,  I  wish  I  were  to  be  seated  with  you 
to-morrow — catching  the  breeze-borne  "burr"  from 
under  Cook's  fine  nose!  How  is  Gross,  dear 
woman,  and  how  are  Mitou  and  Nicette — whom 
I  missed  so  at  Monte  Cassino?  I  spent  four  days 
—out  from  Florence— at  Ned  Boit's  wondrous— 
really  quite  divine  "eyrie"  of  Cernitoio,  over  against 
Vallombrosa,  a  dream  of  Tuscan  loveliness  and  a 
really  admirable  sejour.  ...  I  spent  at  the  last 
two^  divine  weeks  in  Venice— at  the  Barbaro.  I 
don't  care,  frankly,  if  I  never  see  the  vulgarized 
Rome  or  Florence  again,  but  Venice  never  seemed 
to  me  more  loveable — though  the  vaporetto  rages. 
They  keep  their  cars  at  Mestre!  and  I  am  devot 
edly  yours  both, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Miss  Gwenllian  Palgrave. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

Aug.  27,  1907. 
My  dear  Gwenllian  Palgrave, 

It  is  quite  horrid  for  me  to  have  to  tell  you 
(and  after  a  little  delay  caused  by  a  glut  of  corre 
spondence,  at  once,  and  a  pressure  of  other  occupa 
tions)  that  your  gentle  appeal,  on  your  friend's 
behalf,  in  the  matter  of  the  "favourite  quotation," 
finds  me  utterly  helpless  and  embarrassed.  The 
perverse  collectress  proposes,  I  fear,  to  collect  the 
impossible!  I  haven't  a  favourite  quotation— 
absolutely  not:  any  more  than  I  have  a  favourite 
day  in  the  year,  a  favourite  letter  in  the  alphabet 
or  a  favourite  wave  in  the  sea !  And  the  collectress, 


82         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES        1907 

in  general,  has  ever  found  me  dark  and  dumb  and 
odious,  and  I  am  too  aged  and  obstinate  and  brutal 
to  change!  Such  is  the  sorry  tale  I  have  to*  ask 
you  all  patiently  to  hear.  I  wish  you  were,  or  had 
been,  coming  over  to  see  me  from  Canterbury — 
instead  of  labouring  in  that  barren  vineyard  of 
other  friendship.  Do  come  without  fail  the  next 
time  you  are  there;  and  believe  me  your — and  your 
sister's — very  faithful  even  if  very  flowerless  and 
leafless  well-wisher  from  long  ago, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  William  James. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

October  17th,  1907. 
Dearest  William, 

....  I  seem  to  have  followed  your  sum 
mer  rather  well  and  intimately  and  rejoicingly, 
thanks  to  Bill's  impartings  up  to  the  time  he  left 
me,  and  to  the  beautiful  direct  and  copious  news 
aforesaid  from  yourself  and  from  AHce,  and  I 
make  out  that  I  may  deem  things  well  with  you 
when  I  see  you  so  mobile  and  mobilizable  (so 
emancipated  and  unchained  for  being  so,)  as  well 
as  so  fecund  and  so  still  overflowing.  Your  annual 
go  at  Keene  Valley  (which  I'm  never  to  have  so 
much  as  beheld)  and  the  nature  of  your  references 
to  it — as  this  one  to-night — fill  me  with  pangs  and 
yearnings — I  mean  the  bitterness,  almost,  of  envy : 
there  is  so  little  of  the  Keene  Valley  side  of  things 
in  my  life.  But  I  went  up  to  Scotland  a  month 
ago,  for  five  days  at  John  Cadwalader's  (of  N.Y.) 
vast  "shooting"  in  Forfarshire  (let  to  him  out  of 
Lord  Dalhousie's  real  principality,)  and  there,  in 
absolutely  exquisite  weather,  had  a  brief  but  deep 
draught  of  the  glory  of  moor  and  mountain,  as 
that  air,  and  ten-mile  trudges  through  the  heather 


AET.  64  TO  WILLIAM  JAMES  83 

and  by  the  brae-side  (to  lunch  with  the  shooters) 
delightfully  give  it.  It  was  an  exquisite  experience. 
But  those  things  are  over,  and  I  am  "settled  in" 
here,  D.V.,  for  a  good  quiet  time  of  urgent  work 
(during  the  season  here  that  on  the  whole  I  love 
best,  for  it  makes  for  concentration — and  il  n'y  a 
que  9a — for  me  I)  which  will  float  me,  I  trust,  till 
the  end  of  February;  when  I  shall  simply  go  up 
to  London  till  the  mid-May.  No  more  "abroad"  ^ 
for  me  within  any  calculable  time,  heaven  grant! 
Why  the  devil  I  didn't  write  to  you  after  reading 
your  Pragmatism — how  I  kept  from  it — I  can't 
now  explain  save  by  the  very  fact  of  the  spell  itself 
(of  interest  and  enthralment)  that  the  book  cast 
upon  me ;  I  simply  sank  down,  under  it,  into  such 
depths  of  submission  and  assimilation  that  any 
reaction,  very  nearly,,  even  that  of  acknowledg 
ment,  would  have  had  almost  the  taint  of  dissent  or 
escape.  Then  I  was  lost  in  the  wonder  of  the  ex 
tent  to  which  all  my  life  I  have  (like  M.  Jourdain) 
unconsciously  pragmatised.  You  are  immensely 
and  universally  right,  and  I  have  been  absorbing 
a  number  more  of  your  f  ollowings-up  of  the  matter 
in  the  American  (Journal  of  Psychology?)  which 
your  devouring  devotee  Manton  Marble  .  .  I  . 
plied,  and  always  on  invitation  does  ply,  me  with. 
I  feel  the  reading  of  the  book,  at  all  events  to 
have  been  really  the  event  of  my  summer.  In 
which  connection  (that  of  "books"),  I  am  infinitely 
touched  by  your  speaking  of  having  read  parts  of 
my  American  Scene  (of  which  I  hope  Bill  has 
safely  delivered  you  the  copy  of  the  English  edi 
tion)  to  Mrs.  Bryce — paying  them  the  tribute  of 
that  test  of  their  value.  Indeed  the  tribute  of  your 
calling  the  whole  thing  "kostlich  stuff"  and  say 
ing  it  will  remain  to  be  read  so  and  really  gauged, 
gives  me  more  pleasure  than  I  can  say,  and  quick 
ens  my  regret  and  pain  at  the  way  the  fates  have 
been  all  against  (all  finally  and  definitely  now) 


84         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1907 

my  having  been  able  to  carry  out  my  plan  and  do 
a  second  instalment,  embodying  more  and  com 
plementary  impressions.  Of  course  I  had  a  plan 
— and  the  second  vol.  would  have  attacked  the 
subject  (and  my  general  mass  of  impression)  at 
various  other  angles,  thrown  off  various  other  pic 
tures,  in  short  contributed  much  more.  But  the 
thing  was  not  to  be.  ... 

But  I  am  writing  on  far  into  the  dead  unhappy 
night,  while  the  rain  is  on  the  roof — and  the  wind 
in  the  chimneys.  Oh  your  windless  (gateless) 
Cambridge!  Choyez-lei  Tell  Alice  that  all  this 
is  "for  her  too,"  but  she  shall  also  soon  hear  further 
from  yours  and  hers  all  and  always, 

HENKY. 


To  W.  E.  Norris. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
December  23rd,  1907. 
My  dear  Norris, 

I  want  you  to  find  this,  as  by  ancient  and 
inviolate  custom,  or  at  least  intention,  on  your 
table  on  Christmas  a.m.;  but  am  convinced  that, 
whenever  I  post  it,  it  will  reach  you  either  before 
or  after,  and  not  with  true  dramatic  effect.  It  will 
take  you  in  any  case,  however,  the  assurance  of  my 
affectionate  fidelity — little  as  anything  else  for  the 
past  year,  or  I  fear  a  longer  time,  may  have  con 
tributed  to  your  perception  of  that  remembrance. 
The  years  and  the  months  go,  and  somehow  make 
our  meetings  ingeniously  rarer  and  our  intervals 
and  silences  more  monstrous.  It  is  the  effect,  alas, 
of  our  being  as  it  were  antipodal  Provincials — for 
even  if  one  of  us  were  a  Capitalist  the  problem  (of 
occasional  common  days  in  London)  would  be  by 
so  much  simplified.  I  am  in  London  less,  on  the 
whole  (than  during  my  first  years  in  this  place;) 


AET.  64  TO  W.  E.  NORRIS  85 

and  as  you  appear  now  to  be  there  never,  I  flap 
my  wings  and  crane  my  neck  in  the  void.  Last 
spring,  I  confess,  I  committed  an  act  of  compre 
hensive  disloyalty;  I  went  abroad  at  the  winter's 
end  and  remained  till  the  first  days  of  July  (the 
first  half  of  the  time  in  Paris,  roughly  speaking — 
and  on  a  long  and  very  interesting,  extraordinarily 
interesting,  motor-tour  in  France;  the  second  in 
Rome  and  Venice,  as  to  take  leave  of  them  forever.) 
This  took  London  almost  utterly  out  of  my  year, 
and  I  think  I  heard  from  Gosse,  who  happily  for 
him  misses  you  so  much  less  than  I  do,  (I  mean 
enjoys  you  so  much  more — but  no,  that  isn't  right 
either!)  that  you  had  in  May  or  June  shone  in  the 
eye  of  London.  I  am  not  this  year,  however,  I 
thank  my  stars,  to  repeat  the  weird  exploit  of  a 
"long  continental  absence" — such  things  have  quite 
ceased  to  be  in  my  real  mceursj— and  I  shall  there 
fore  plan  a  campaign  in  towja^for  May  and  June) 
that  will  have  for  its  leading  feature  to  encounter 
you  somewhere  and  somehow.  Till  then — that  is 
to  a  later  date  than  usual — I  expect  to  bide  quietly 
here,  where  a  continuity  of  occupation — strange 
to  say — causes  the  days  and  the  months  to  melt 
in  my  grasp,  and  where,  in  spite  of  rather  an  ap 
palling  invasion  of  outsiders  and  idlers  (a  spread 
ing  colony  and  a  looming  menace,)  the  conditions 
of  life  declare  themselves  as  emphatically  my  rus 
tic  "fit"  as  I  ten  years  ago  made  them  out  to  be. 
I  have  lived  into  my  little  house  and  garden  so 
thoroughly  that  they  have  become  a  kind  of  domi 
ciliary  skin,  that  can't  be  peeled  off  without  pain — 
and  in  fact  to  go  away  at  all  is  to  have,  rather,  the 
sense  of  being  flayed.  Nevertheless  I  was  glad, 
last  spring,  to  have  been  tricked,  rather,  into  a 
violent  change  of  manners  and  practices — violent 
partly  because  my  ten  weeks  in  Paris  were,  for  me, 
on  a  basis  most  unprecedented:  I  paid  a  visit  of 
that  monstrous  length  to  friends  (I  had  never  done 


86         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       190? 

so  in  my  life  before,)  and  in  a  beautiful  old  house 
in  the  heart  of  the  Rive  Gauche,  amid  old  private 
hotels  and  hidden  gardens  (Rue  de  Varenne), 
tasted  socially  and  associatively,  so  to  speak,  of  a 
new  Paris  altogether  and  got  a  bellyful  of  fresh 
and  nutritive  impressions.  Yet  I  have  just  de 
clined  a  repetition  of  it  inexorably,  and  it's  more 
and  more  vivid  to  me  that  I  have  as  much  as  I  can 
tackle  to  lead  my  own  life — I  can't  ever  again 
attempt,  for  more  than  the  fleeting  hour,  to  lead 
other  people's.  (I  have  indeed,  I  should  add,  suf 
fered  infiltration  of  the  poison  of  the  motor — con 
templatively  and  touringly  used:  that,  truly,  is  a 
huge  extension  of  life,  of  experience  and  conscious 
ness.  But  I  thank  my  stars  that  I'm  too  poor  to 
have  one.)  I'm  afraid  I've  no  other  adventure 
to  regale  you  with.  I  am  engaged,  none  the  less, 
in  a  perpetual  adventure,  the  most  thrilling  and  in 
every  way  the  greatest  of  my  life,  and  which  con 
sists  of  having  more  than  four  years  entered  into 
a  state  of  health  so  altogether  better  than  I  had 
ever  known  that  my  whole  consciousness  is  trans 
formed  by  the  intense  alleviation  of  it,  and  I  lose 
much  time  in  pinching  myself  to  see  if  this  be  not, 
really,  "none  of  I."  That  fact,  however,  is  much 
more  interesting  to  myself  than  to  other  people — 
partly  because  no  one  but  myself  was  ever  aware 
of  the  unhappy  nature  of  the  physical  conscious 
ness  from  which  I  have  been  redeemed.  It  may 
give  a  glimmering  sense  of  the  degree  of  the  re 
demption,  however,  that  I  should,  in  the  first  place, 
be  willing  to  fly  in  the  face  of  the  jealous  gods  by 
so  blatant  a  proclamation  of  it,  and  in  the  second, 
find  the  value  of  it  still  outweigh  the  formidable, 
the  heaped-up  and  pressed  together  burden  of  my 
years. 

But  enough  of  my  own  otherwise  meagre  annals. 
...  I  must  catch  my  post.  I  haven't  sounded 
you  for  the  least  news  of  your  own — it  being  need- 


AET.  64  TO  W.  E.  NORRIS  87 

less  to  tell  you  that  I  hold  out  my  cap  for  it  even 
as  an  organ-grinder  who  makes  eyes  for  pence  to 
a  gentleman  on  a  balcony:  especially  when  the 
balcony  overhangs  your  luxuriant  happy  valley  and 
your  turquoise  sea.  I  go  on  taking  immense  com 
fort  in  the  "Second  Home,"  as  I  beg  your  pardon 
for  calling  it,  that  your  sister  and  her  husband 
must  make  for  you,  and  am  almost  as  presump 
tuously  pleased  with  it  as  if  I  had  invented  it.  I 
am  myself  literally  eating  a  baked  apple  and  a 
biscuit  on  Xmas  evening  all  alone:  I  have  no  one 
in  the  house,  I  never  dine  out  here  under  any  colour 
(there  are  to  be  found  people  who  do!)  and  I 
have  been  deaf  to  the  syren  voice  of  Paris,  and  to 
other  gregarious  pressure.  But  I  wish  you  a  brave 
feast  and  a  blameless  year  and  am  yours,  my  dear 
Norris,  all  faithfully  and  fondly, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  W.  E.  Norris. 

H.  J.  had  inadvertently  addressed  the  preceding  letter 
to  'E.  W.  Norris  Esq.' 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
December  26:  1907. 
My  dear  Norris, 

It  came  over  me  in  the  oddest  way,  weirdly 
and  dimly,  as  I  lay  soaking  in  my  hot  bath  an  hour 
ago,  that  my  jaded  and  inadvertent  hand  (I  have 
written  so  many  letters  in  so  few  days,  and  you 
see  the  effect  on  everyone  doubtless  but  your  own 
impeccably  fingered  self)  superscribed  my  Xmas 
envelope  with  the  monstrous  collocation  "E.W."! 
The  effect  has  been  probably  to  make  you  think 
the  letter  a  circular  and  chuck  it  into  the  fire — or, 
if  you  have  opened  it,  to  convince  you  that  my 
handsome  picture  of  my  "health"  is  true — if  true 
at  all — of  my  digestion  and  other  vulgar  parts, 


88         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1907 

at  the  expense  of  my  brain.  Clearly  you  must 
believe  me  in  distinct  cerebral  decline.  Yet  I'm 
not,  I  am  only — or  was — in  a  state  of  purely  and 
momentarily  manual  muddle.  But  the  curious  and 
interesting  thing  is :  Why,  suddenly,  as  I  lay  this 
cold  morning  agreeably  steaming,  did  the  vision  of 
the  hind-part-before  order  come  straight  at  me  out 
of  the  vapours,  after  three  or  four  days,  when  I 
didn't  know  I  was  thinking  of  you? 

Well,  it  only  shows  how  much  you  are,  my  dear 
Norris,  in  the  thoughts  of  yours  remorsefully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 

P.S.    I  hope,  now,  I  did  do  it  after  all! 


To  Dr.  and  Mrs.  J.  William  White. 

H.  J.  had  enjoyed  the  hospitality  of  these  friends  at 
Philadelphia,  during  his  last  visit  to  America. 

Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

Jan.  1,  1908. 
Dear  William  and  Letitia! 

It  would  be  monstrous  of  me  to  say  that 
what  I  most  valued  in  William's  last  brave  letter 
was  Letitia's  gentle  "drag"  upon  it;  and  I  hasten 
to  insist  that  when  I  dwell  on  the  pleasure  so  pro 
duced  by  Letitia's  presence  in  it  (to  the  extent  of 
her  gently  "dragging")  I  feel  that  she  at  least  will 
know  perfectly  what  I  mean!  Explain  this  to 
William,  my  dear  Letitia:  I  leave  all  the  burden 
to  you — so  used  as  you  are  to  burdens!  It  was 
delightful,  I  can  honestly  say,  to  hear  from  you 
no  long  time  since — and  whether  by  controlled  or 
uncontrolled  inspiration;  and  I  tick  a  small  space 
clear  this  morning — clear  in  an  air  fairly  black 
with  the  correspondence  "of  the  season" — just  to 
focus  you  fondly  in  it  and  make,  for  the  friendly 


AET.  64    TO  DR.  AND  MRS.  J.  W.  WHITE  89 

sound  of  my  Remington,  a  penetrable  medium  and 
a  straight  course.     I  am  shut  up,  as  mostly,  you 
see,  in  the  little  stronghold  your  assault  of  which 
has  never  lost  you  honour,  at  least — I  mean  the 
honour  of  the  brave  besieger — however  little  else 
it  may  have  brought  you ;  and  I  waggle  this  small 
white  flag  at  you,  from  my  safe  distance,  over  the 
battlements,  as  for  a  cheerful  truce  or  amicable 
New  Year's  parley.     I  think  I  must  figure  to  you 
a  good  deal  as  a  "banked-in"  Esquimau  with  his 
head  alone  extruding  through  the  sole  orifice  of 
his  hut,  or  perhaps  as  a  Digger  Indian,  bursting 
through  his  mound,  by  the  same  perforation,  even 
as  a  chicken  through  its  shell:  by  reason  of  the 
abject  immobility  practised  by  me  while  you  and 
Letitia  hurl  yourselves  from  one  ecstasy  of  move 
ment,  one  form  of  exercise,  one  style  of  saddled 
or  harnessed   or  milked   or  prodded   or  perhaps 
merely  "fattened,"  quadruped,  to  another.     Your 
letter — this  last — is  a  noble  picture  of  a  free  quad 
rupedal  life — which  gives  me  the  sense,  all  delight 
ful,  of  seeing  you  both  alone  erect  and  nimble  and 
graceful  in  the  midst  of  the  browsing  herd  of  your 
subjects.    Well,  it  all  sounds  delightfully  pastoral 
to  one  whose  "stable"  consists  but  of  the  go-cart 
in  which  the  gardener  brings  up  the  luggage  of 
those  of  my  visitors    (from  the  station)   who  ad 
vance  successfully  to  the  stage  of  that  question  of 
transport;  and  my  outhouses  of  the  shed  under 
which  my  solitary  henchman   (but  sufficient  to  a 
drawbridge  that  plays  so  easily  up!)    "attends  to 
the  boots"  of  those  confronted  with  the  inevitable 
subsequent  phase  of  early  matutinal   departure! 
All  of  which  means,  dear  both  of  you,  that  I  do 
seem  to  read  into  your  rich  record  the  happiest 
evidences  of  health  as  well  as  of  wealth.    You  take 
my  breath  away — as,  for  that  matter,  you  can  but 
too  easily  figure  with  your  ever-natural  image  of 
me  gaping  through  a  crevice  of  my  door! — the 


90         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1908 

only  other  at  all  equal  loss  of  it  proceeding  but 
from  my  mild  daily  revolution  up  and  down  our 
little  local  eminence  here.  No,  you  won't  believe 
it — that  these  have  been  my  only  revolutions  since 
I  last  risked,  at  a  loophole,  seeing  you  thunder 
past.  I  shall  risk  it  again  when  you  thunder  back 
— and  really,  though  it  spoils  the  consistency  of 
my  builded  metaphor,  watch  fondly  for  the  charm 
ing  flash  that  will  precede,  and  prepare !  I  haven't 
been  even  as  far  as  to  see  the  good  Abbeys  at 
Fairford — was  capable  of  not  even  sparing  that 
encouragement  when  she  kindly  wrote  to  me  for 
a  visit  toward  the  autumn's  end.  I  haven't  so  much 
as  pilgrimised  to  the  other  shrine  in  Tite  St. — and, 
having  so  little  to  tell  you,  really  mustn't  prolong 
this  record  of  my  vacancy.  I  am  quite  spending 
the  winter  here — "bracing"  for  what  the  spring 
and  summer  may  bring.  But  I  do  get,  as  the  very 
breath  of  the  Spice-islands,  the  balmy  sidewind  of 
your  general  luxuriance,  and  it  makes  me  glad  and 
grateful  for  you,  and  keeps  me  just  as  much  as 
ever  your  faithful,  vigilant,  steady,  sturdy  friend, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

The  work  just  finished  was  the  revision  of  Tine  High 
Bid,  shortly  to  be  produced  by  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Forbes 
Robertson. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

January  2nd,  1908. 
My  dear  Edith, 

G.  T.  Lapsley  has  gone  to  bed — he  has 
been  seeing  the  New  Year  in  with  me  (generously 
giving  a  couple  of  days  to  it) — and  I  snatch  this 
hour  from  out  the  blizzard  of  Xmas  and  Year's 
End  and  New  Year's  Beginning  missives,  to  tell 
you  too  belatedly  how  touched  I  have  been  with 


AET.  64  TO  MRS.   WHARTON  91 

your  charming  little  Xmas  memento — an  exquisite 
and  interesting  piece  for  which  I  have  found  a  very 
effective  position  on  the  little  old  oak-wainscotted 
wall  of  my  very  own  room.    There  it  will  hang  as 
a  fond  reminder  of  tout  ce  que  je  vous  dois.     (I 
am  trying  to  make  use  of  an  accursed  "fountain" 
pen — but  it's  a  vain  struggle;  it  beats  me,  and  I 
recur  to  this   familiar  and  well-worn   old  unim 
proved  utensil. )     I  have  passed  here  a  very  solitary 
and  casanier  Christmastide  (of  wondrous  still  and 
frosty  days,  and  nights  of  huge  silver  stars,)  and 
yesterday  finished  a  job  of  the  last  urgency  for 
which  this  intense  concentration  had  been  all  vitally 
indispensable.     I  got  the  conditions,  here  at  home 
thus,  in  perfection — I  put  my  job  through,  and 
now — or  in  time — it  may  have,  on  my  scant  for 
tunes,  a  far-reaching  effect.    If  it  does  have,  you'll 
be  the  first  all  generously  to  congratulate  me,  and 
to  understand  why,  under  the  stress  of  it,  I  couldn't 
indeed  break  my  little  started  spell  of  application 
by  a  frolic  absence  from  my  field  of  action.    If  it, 
on  the  contrary,  fails  of  that  influence  I  offer  my 
breast  to  the  acutest  of  your  silver  arrows ;  though 
the  beautiful  charity  with  which  you  have  drawn 
from  your  critical  quiver  nothing  more   fatally- 
feathered  than  that  dear  little  framed  and  glazed, 
squared  and  gilded  etrenne  serves  for  me  as  a  kind 
of  omen  of  my  going  unscathed  to  the  end.  .  .  . 
I  admit  that  it's  horrible  that  we  can't — nous  autres 
— talk  more  face  to  face  of  the  other  phenomena; 
but  life  is  terrible,  tragic,  perverse  and  abysmal — 
besides,  patientons.     I  can't  pretend  to  speak  of 
the  phenomena  that  are  now  renewing  themselves 
round  you;  for  there  is  the  eternal  penalty  of  my 
having  shared  your  cup  last  year — that  I  must 
taste  the  liquor  or  go  without — there  can  be  no 
question  of  my  otherwise  handling  the  cup.     Ah 
I'm  conscious  enough,  I  assure  you,  of  going  with 
out,  and  of  all  the  rich  arrears  that  will  never — for 


92         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       loos 

me — be  made  up — !  But  I  hope  for  yourselves  a 
thoroughly  good  and  full  experience — about  the 
possibilities  of  which,  as  I  see  them,  there  is,  alas, 
all  too  much  to  say.  Let  me  therefore  but  wonder 
and  wish!  .  .  .  But  it's  long  past  midnight,  and 
I  am  yours  and  Teddy's  ever  so  affectionate 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Gaillard  T.  Lapsley. 

Reform  Club, 
Pall  Mall,  S.W. 

March  17th,  1908. 
My  dear,  dear  Gaillard! 

I  can't  tell  you  with  what  tender  sympathy 
your  rather  disconcerting  little  news  inspires  me 
nor  how  my  heart  goes  out  to  you.  Alack,  alack, 
how  we  do  have  to  pay  for  things — and  for  our 
virtues  and  grandeurs  and  beauties  (even  as  you 
are  now  doing,  overworked  hero  and  model  of  dis 
tinguished  valour,)  as  well  as  for  our  follies  and 
mistakes.  However,  you  have  on  your  record 
exactly  that  mistake  of  too  generous  a  sacrifice. 
Fortunately  you  have  been  pulled  up  before  you 
have  quite  chucked  away  your  all.  It  must  be 
deuced  dreary — yet  if  you  ask  me  whether  I  think 
of  you  more  willingly  and  endurably  thus,  or  as 
your  image  of  pale  overstrain  haunted  me  after 
you  had  left  me  at  the  New  Year,  I  shall  have  no 
difficulty  in  replying.  In  fact,  dearest  Gaillard, 
and  at  the  risk  of  aggravating  you,  I  like  to  keep 
you  a  little  before  me  in  the  passive,  the  recum 
bent,  the  luxurious  and  ministered-to  posture,  and 
my  imagination  rings  all  the  possible  changes  on 
the  forms  of  your  noble  surrender.  Lie  as  flat  as 
you  can,  and  live  and  think  and  feel  and  talk  (and 
keep  silent!)  as  idly — and  you  will  thereby  be  lay 
ing  up  the  most  precious  treasure.  It's  a  heaven- 


AET.  64     TO  GAILLARD  T.  LAPSLEY  93 

appointed  interlude,  and  cela  ne  tient  qu'a  vous 
(I  mean  to  the  wave  of  your  white  hand)  to  let 
it  become  a  thing  of  beauty  like  the  masque  of 
Comus.  Cultivate,  horizontally  the  waving  of  that 
hand — and  you  will  brush  away,  for  the  time,  all 
responsibilities  and  superstitions,  and  the  peace  of 
the  Lord  will  descend  upon  you,  and  you  will  be 
come  as  one  of  the  most  promising  little  good  boys 
that  ever  was.  Apres  quoi  the  whole  process  and 
experience  will  grow  interesting,  amusing,  tissue- 
making  (history-making,)  to  you,  and  you  will, 
after  you  get  well,  feel  it  to  have  been  the  time  of 
your  life  which  you'd  have  been  most  sorry  to  miss. 
Some  five  years  ago — or  more — a  very  interesting 
young  friend  of  mine,  Paul  Harvey  (then  in  the 
War  Office  as  Private  Sec.  to  Lord  Lansdowne), 
was  taken  exactly  as  you  are,  and  stopped  off  just 
as  you  are  and  consigned  exactly  to  your  place, 
I  think — or  rather  no,  to  a  pseudo-Nordrach  in  the 
Mendips.  I  remember  how  I  sat  on  just  such  a 
morning  as  this  at  this  very  table  and  in  this  very 
seat  and  wrote  him  on  this  very  paper  in  the  very 
sense  in  which  I  am  no  less  confidently  writing  to 
you — urging  him  to  let  himself  utterly  go  and  cul 
tivate  the  day-to-day  and  the  hand-to-mouth  and 
the  questions-be-damned,  even  as  an  exquisite  fine 
art.  Well,  it  absolutely  and  directly  and  beauti 
fully  worked:  he  recula — to  the  very  limit — pour 
mieux  sauter,  and  has  since  saute'd  so  well  that  his 
career  has  caught  him  up  again.  .  .  .  Your  case 
will  have  gone  practically  quite  on  all  fours  with 
this.  I  am  drenching  you  with  my  fond  eloquence 
—but  what  will  you  have  when  you  have  touched 
me  so  by  writing  me  so  charmingly  out  of  your 
quiet — though  ever  so  shining,  I  feel — little  cham 
ber  in  the  great  Temple  of  Simplification?  I  shall 
return  to  the  charge — if  it  be  allowed  me — and  per 
haps  some  small  sign  from  you  I  shall  have  after 
a  while  again.  I  came  up  from  L.H.  yesterday 


94         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1908 

only — and  shall  be  in  town  after  this  a  good  deal, 
D.V.,  through  the  rest  of  this  month  and  April 
and  May.  At  some  stage  of  your  mouvement 
ascensionnel  I  shall  see  you — for  I  hope  they  won't 
be  sending  you  up  quite  to  Alpine  Heights.  Take 
it  from  me,  dear,  dear  G.,  that  your  cure  will  have 
a  social  iridescence,  for  your  acute  and  ironic  and 
genial  observation,  of  the  most  beguiling  kind. 
But  you  don't  need  to  "take"  that  or  any  other 
wisdom  that  your  beautiful  intelligence  now  plays 
with  from  any  other  source  but  that  intelligence; 
therefore  be  beholden  to  me  almost  only  for  the 
fresh  reassurance  that  I  am  more  affectionately 
than  ever  yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

The  first  performance  of  The  High  Bid  took  place  in 
Edinburgh  three  days  after  the  date  of  the  following. 

Roxburghe  Hotel,  Edinburgh. 

March  23rd,  1908. 
My  dear  Edith! 

This  is  just  a  tremulous  little  line  to  say 
to  you  that  the  daily  services  of  intercession  and 
propitiation  (to  the  infernal  gods,  those  of  jealousy 
and  guignon)  that  I  feel  sure  you  have  instituted 
for  me  will  continue  to  be  deeply  appreciated. 
They  have  already  borne  fruit  in  the  shape  of 
a  desperate  (comparative)  calm — in  my  racked 
breast — after  much  agitation — and  even  to-day 
(Sunday)  of  a  feverish  gaiety  during  the  journey 
from  Manchester,  to  this  place,  achieved  an  hour 
ago  by  special  train  for  my  whole  troupe  and  its 
impedimenta — I  travelling  with  the  animals  like 
the  lion-tamer  or  the  serpent-charmer  in  person 
and  quite  enjoying  the  caravan-quality,  the  bariole 


AET.  64  TO  MRS.  WHARTON  95 

Bohemian  or  picaresque  note  of  the  affair.  Here 
we  are  for  the  last  desperate  throes — but  the  omens 
are  good,  the  little  play  pretty  and  pleasing  and 
amusing  and  orthodox  and  mercenary  and  safe 
(absit  omen!) — cravenly,  ignobly  canny:  also 
clearly  to  be  very  decently  acted  indeed:  little 
Gertrude  Elliott,  on  whom  it  so  infinitely  hangs, 
showing  above  all  a  gallantry,  capacity  and  v ail- 
lance,  on  which  I  had  not  ventured  to  build.  She 
is  a  scrap  (personally,  physically)  where  she  should 
be  a  presence,  and  handicapped  by  a  face  too  small 
in  size  to  be  a  field  for  the  play  of  expression;  but 
allowing  for  this  she  illustrates  the  fact  that  intel 
ligence  and  instinct  are  capables  de  tout — so  that 
I  still  hope.  And  each  time  they  worry  through 
the  little  "piggery"  it  seems  to  me  more  firm  and 
more  intrinsically  without  holes  and  weak  spots — 
in  itself  I  mean;  and  not  other  in  short,  than  "con 
summately"  artful.  I  even  quite  awfully  wish  you 
and  Teddy  were  to  be  here — even  so  far  as  that 
do  I  go!  But  wire  me  a  word — here — on  Thurs 
day  a.m. — and  I  shall  be  almost  as  much  heartened 
up.  I  will  send  you  as  plain  and  unvarnished  a 
one  after  the  event  as  the  case  will  lend  itself  to. 
Even  an  Edinburgh  public  isn't  (I  mean  as  we  go 
here  all  by  the  London)  determinant,  of  course- 
however,  a  la  guerre  comme  a  la  guerre,  and  don't 
intermit  the  burnt-offerings.  More,  more,  very 
soon — and  you  too  will  have  news  for  yours  and 
Edward's  right  recklessly  even  though  ruefully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


96         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       loos 


To  Henry  James,  junior. 

105  Pall  Mall,  S.W. 

April  3rd,  1908. 

Dearest  Harry, 

.  .  .  The  Nightmare  of  the  Edition  (of  my 
Works !)  is  the  real  mot  de  VEnigme  of  all  my  long 
gaps  and  delinquencies  these  many  months  past 
— my  terror  of  not  keeping  sufficiently  ahead  in 
doing  my  part  of  it  (all  the  revising,  rewriting, 
retouching,  Preface-making  and  proof -correcting) 
has  so  paralysed  me — as  a  panic  fear — that  I  have 
let  other  decencies  go  to  the  wall.  The  printers 
and  publishers  tread  on  my  heels,  and  I  feel  their 
hot  breath  behind  me — whereby  I  keep  at  it  in 
order  not  to  be  overtaken.  Fortunately  I  have 
kept  at  it  so  that  I  am  almost  out  of  the  wood,  and 
the  next  very  few  weeks  or  so  will  completely  lay 
the  spectre.  The  case  has  been  complicated  badly, 
moreover,  the  last  month — and  even  before — by 
my  having,  of  all  things  in  the  world,  let  myself 
be  drawn  into  a  theatrical  adventure — which  for 
tunately  appears  to  have  turned  out  as  well  as  I 
could  have  possibly  expected  or  desired.  Forbes 
Robertson  and  his  wife  produced  on  the  26th  last 
in  Edinburgh — being  on  "tour,"  and  the  provincial 
production  to  begin  with,  as  more  experimental, 
having  good  reason  in  its  favour — a  three-act 
comedy  of  mine  ("The  High  Bid") — which  is  just 
only  the  little  one-act  play  presented  as  a  "tale" 
at  the  end  of  the  volume  of  the  "Two  Magics"; 
the  one-act  play  proving  really  a  perfect  three- 
act  one,  dividing  itself  (by  two  short  entractes, 
without  fiddles)  perfectly  at  the  right  little  places 
as  climaxes — with  the  artful  beauty  of  unity  of 
time  and  place  preserved,  etc.  ...  It  had  a  great 
and  charming  success  before  a  big  house  at  Edin- 


ABT.         TO  HENRY  JAMES,  JUNIOR          97 

burgh — a  real  and  unmistakable  victory — but  what 
was  most  brought  home  thereby  is  that  it  should 
have  been  discharged  straight  in  the  face  of  Lon 
don.  That  will  be  its  real  and  best  function.  This 
I  am  hoping  for  during  May  and  June.  It  has 
still  to  be  done  at  Newcastle,  Liverpool,  etc.  (was 
done  this  past  week  three  times  at  Glasgow.  Of 
course  on  tour  three  times  in  a  week  is  the  most 
they  can  give  a  play  in  a  minor  city.)  But  my 
great  point  is  that  preparations,  rehearsals,  lavish- 
merits  of  anxious  time  over  it  (after  completely 
re-writing  it  and  improving  it  to  begin  with)  have 
represented  a  sacrifice  of  days  and  weeks  to  them 
that  have  direfully  devoured  my  scant  margin — 
thus  making  my  intense  nervousness  (about  them) 
doubly  nervous.  I  left  home  on  the  17th  last  and 
rehearsed  hard  (every  blessed  day)  at  Manchester, 
and  at  Edinburgh  till  the  production — having  al 
ready,  three  weeks  before  that  in  London,  given 
up  a  whole  week  to  the  same.  I  came  back  to  town 
a  week  ago  to-night  (saw  a  second  night  in  Edin 
burgh,  which  confirmed  the  impression  of  the  first,) 
and  return  to  L.H.  to-morrow,  after  a  very  decent 
huitaine  de  jours  here  during  which  I  have  had 
quiet  mornings,  and  even  evenings,  of  work.  I  go 
to  Paris  about  the  20th  to  stay  10  days,  at  the  most, 
with  Mrs  Wharton,  and  shall  be  back  by  May  1st. 
I  yearn  to  know  positively  that  your  Dad  and 
Mother  arrive  definitely  on  the  Oxford  job  then. 
I  have  had  to  be  horribly  inhuman  to  them  in  re 
spect  to  the  fond  or  repeated  expression  of  that 
yearning — but  they  will  more  than  understand 
why,  "druv"  as  I've  been,  and  also  understand  how 
the  prospect  of  having  them  with  me,  and  being 
with  them,  for  a  while,  has  been  all  these  last  months 
as  the  immediate  jewel  of  my  spur.  Read  them 
this  letter  and  let  it  convey  to  them,  all  tenderly, 
that  I  live  in  the  hope  of  their  operative  advent, 
and  shall  bleed  half  to  death  if  there  be  any  hitch. 


98         LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       IQOS 

.  .  .  But  I  embrace  you  all  in  spirit  and  am  ever 
your  fond  old  Uncle, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  W.  D.  Howells. 

The  "lucubrations"  are  of  course  the  prefaces  written 
for  the  collected  edition.  The  number  of  volumes  was 
eventually  raised  to  twenty-four,  but  The  Bostonians  was 
not  included.  The  "one  thing"  referred  to,  towards 
the  end  of  this  letter,  as  likely  to  involve  another  visit  to 
America  would  seem  to  be  the  possible  production  there 
of  one  of  his  plays;  while  the  further  reason  for  wishing 
to  return  was  doubtless  connected  with  his  project  of 
writing  a  novel  of  which  the  scene  was  to  be  laid  in 
America — the  novel  that  finally  became  The  Ivory  Tower. 

Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

17th  August,  1908. 
My  dear  Howells, 

A  great  pleasure  to  me  is  your  good  and 
generous  letter  just  received — with  its  luxurious 
implied  licence  for  me  of  seeking  this  aid  to  prompt 
response;  at  a  time  when  a  pressure  of  complica 
tions  (this  is  the  complicated  time  of  the  year  even 
in  my  small  green  garden)  defeats  too  much  and 
too  often  the  genial  impulse.  But  so  far  as  com 
punction  started  and  guided  your  pen,  I  really  rub 
my  eyes  for  vision  of  where  it  may — save  as  most 
misguidedly — have  come  in.  You  were  so  far  from 
having  distilled  any  indigestible  drop  for  me  on 
that  pleasant  ultimissimo  Sunday,  that  I  parted 
from  you  with  a  taste,  in  my  mouth,  absolutely 
saccharine — sated  with  sweetness,  or  with  sweet 
reasonableness,  so  to  speak;  and  aching,  or  wincing, 
in  no  single  fibre.  Extravagant  and  licentious, 
almost,  your  delicacy  of  fear  of  the  contrary;  so 
much  so,  in  fact,  that  I  didn't  remember  we  had 


S  TO  W.   D.   HOWELLS  99 

even  spoken  of  the  heavy  lucubrations  in  question, 
or  that  you  had  had  any  time  or  opportunity,  since 
their  "inception,"  to  look  at  one.     However  your 
fond  mistake  is  all  to  the  good,  since  it  has  brought 
me  your  charming  letter  and  so  appreciative  re 
marks  you  therein  make.    My  actual  attitude  about 
the  Lucubrations  is  almost  only,  and  quite  inevi 
tably,  that  they  make,  to  me,  for  weariness;  by 
reason  of  their  number  and  extent — I've  now  but 
a  couple  more  to  write.     This  staleness  of  sensi 
bility,  in  connection  with  them,  blocks  out  for  the 
hour  every  aspect  but  that  of  their  being  all  done, 
and  of  then;  perhaps  helping  the  Edition  to  sell 
two  or  three  copies  more!     They  will  have  repre 
sented  much  labour  to  this  latter  end — though  in 
that  they  will  have  differed  indeed  from  no  other 
of  their  fellow-manifestations   (in  genera])   what 
ever;  and  the  resemblance  will  be  even  increased  if 
the  two  or  three  copies  don't,  in  the  form  of  an 
extra   figure   or   two,   mingle   with   my   withered 
laurels.     They  are,  in  general,  a  sort  of  plea  for 
Criticism,  for  Discrimination,  for  Appreciation  on 
other  than  infantile  lines — as  against  the  so  almost 
universal  Anglo-Saxon  absence  of  these  things; 
which  tends  so,  in  our  general  trade,  it  seems  to  me, 
to  break  the  heart.    However,  I  am  afraid  I'm  too 
sick  of  the  mere  doing  of  them,  and  of  the  general 
strain  of  the  effort  to  avoid  the  deadly  danger  of 
repetition,  to  say  much  to  the  purpose  about  them. 
They  ought,  collected  together,  none  the  less,  to 
form  a  sort  of  comprehensive  manual  or  vade- 
mecum  for  aspirants  in  our  arduous  profession. 
Still,  it  will  be  long  before  I  shall  want  to  collect 
them  together  for  that  purpose  and  furnish  them 
with  a  final  Preface.     I've  done  with  prefaces  for 
ever.     As  for  the  Edition  itself,  it  has  racked  me 
a  little  that  I've  had  to  leave  out  so  many  things 
that  would  have  helped  to  make  for  rather  a  more 
vivid  completeness.    I  don't  at  all  regret  the  things, 


100       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       IQOS 

pretty  numerous,  that  I've  omitted  from  deep- 
seated  preference  and  design ;  but  I  do  a  little  those 
that  are  crowded  out  by  want  of  space  and  by  the 
rigour  of  the  23  vols.,  and  23  only,  which  were  the 
condition  of  my  being  able  to  arrange  the  matter 
with  the  Scribners  at  all.  Twenty-three  do  seem  a 
fairly  blatant  array — and  yet  I  rather  surmise  that 
there  may  have  to  be  a  couple  of  supplementary 
volumes  for  certain  too  marked  omissions;  such 
being,  on  the  whole,  detrimental  to  an  all  profes 
sedly  comprehensive  presentation  of  one's  stuff. 
Only  these,  I  pray  God,  without  Prefaces!  And  I 
have  even,  in  addition,  a  dim  vague  view  of  re- 
introducing,  with  a  good  deal  of  titivation  and 
cancellation,  the  too-diffuse  but,  I  somehow  feel, 
tolerably  full  and  good  "Bostonians"  of  nearly  a 
quarter  of  a  century  ago;  that  production  never 
having,  even  to  my  much-disciplined  patience,  re 
ceived  any  sort  of  justice.  But  it  will  take,  doubt 
less,  a  great  deal  of  artful  re-doing — and  I  haven't, 
now,  had  the  courage  or  time  for  anything  so 
formidable  as  touching  and  re-touching  it.  I  feel 
at  the  same  time  how  the  series  suffers  commercially 
from  its  having  been  dropped  so  completely  out. 
Basta  pure — basta! 

I  am  charmed  to  hear  of  your  Roman  book  and 
beg  you  very  kindly  to  send  it  me  directly  it  bounds 
into  the  ring.  I  rejoice,  moreover,  with  much  envy, 
and  also  a  certain  yearning  and  impotent  non-in 
telligence,  at  your  being  moved  to-day  to  Roman 
utterance — I  mean  in  presence  of  the  so  bedrenched 
and  vulgarised  (I  mean  more  particularly  com- 
monised)  and  transformed  City  (as  well  as,  alas, 
more  or  less,  Suburbs)  of  our  current  time.  There 
was  nothing,  I  felt,  to  myself,  I  could  less  do  than 
write  again,  in  the  whole  presence — when  I  was 
there  some  fifteen  months  agone.  The  idea  of  do 
ing  so  (even  had  any  periodical  wanted  my  stuff, 
much  less  bid  for  it)  would  have  affected  me  as  a 


AET.  65  TO  W.  D.  HOWELLS  101 

sort  of  give-away  of  my  ancient  and  other  reactions 
in  presence  of  all  the  unutterable  old  Rome  I  origi 
nally  found  and  adored.  It  would  have  come  over 
me  that  if  those  ancient  emotions  of  my  own  meant 
anything,  no  others  on  the  new  basis  could  mean 
much;  or  if  any  on  the  new  basis  should  pretend 
to  sense,  it  would  be  at  the  cost  of  all  imputable 
coherency  and  sincerity  on  the  part  of  my  prime 
infatuation.  In  spite,  all  the  same,  of  which  doubt 
less  too  pedantic  view — it  only  means,  I  fear,  that 
I  am,  to  my  great  disadvantage,  utterly  bereft  of 
any  convenient  journalistic  ease — I  am  just  be 
ginning  to  re-do  .  .  .  certain  little  old  Italian 
papers,  with  titivations  and  expansions,  in  form 
to  match  with  a  volume  of  "English  Hours"  re- 
fabricated  three  or  four  years  ago  on  the  same 
system.  In  this  little  job  I  shall  meet  again  my 
not  much  more  than  scant,  yet  still  appreciable,  old 
Roman  stuff  in  my  path — and  shall  have  to  com 
mit  myself  about  it,  or  about  its  general  subject, 
somehow  or  other.  I  shall  trick  it  out  again  to  my 
best  ability,  at  any  rate — and  to  the  cost,  I  fear, 
of  your  thinking  I  have  retitivation  on  the  brain. 
I  haven't — I  only  have  it  on  (to  the  end  that  I 
may  then  have  it  a  little  consequently  in)  the  flat 
pocket-book.  The  system  has  succeeded  a  little 
with  "English  Hours";  which  have  sold  quite  vul 
garly — for  wares  of  mine ;  whereas  the  previous  and 
original  untitivated  had  long  since  dropped  almost 
to  nothing.  In  spite  of  which  I  could  really  shed 
salt  tears  of  impatience  and  yearning  to  get  back, 
after  so  prolonged  a  blocking  of  traffic,  to  too 
dreadfully  postponed  and  neglected  "creative" 
work ;  an  accumulated  store  of  ideas  and  reachings- 
out  for  which  even  now  clogs  my  brain. 

We  are  having  here  so  bland  and  beautiful  a 
summer  that  when  I  receive  the  waft  of  your  fur 
nace-mouth,  blown  upon  my  breakfast-table  every 
few  days  through  the  cornucopia,  or  improvised 


102       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES 

resounding  trumpet,  of  the  Times,  I  groan  across 
at  my  brother  William  (now  happily  domesticated 
with  me:)  "Ah  why  did  they,  poor  infatuated 
dears?  why  did  they?" — and  he  always  knows  I 
mean  Why  did  you  three  hie  you  home  from  one 
of  the  most  beautiful  seasons  of  splendid  cool  sum 
mer,  or  splendid  summery  cool,  that  ever  was,  just 
to  swoon  in  the  arms  of  your  Kittery  genius  loci 
(genius  of  perspiration!) — to  whose  terrific  em 
brace  you  saw  me  four  years  ago,  or  whatever  ter 
rible  time  it  was,  almost  utterly  succumb.  In  my 
small  green  garden  here  the  elements  have  been, 
ever  since  you  left,  quite  enchantingly  mixed;  and 
I  have  been  quite  happy  and  proud  to  show  my 
brother  and  his  wife  and  two  of  his  children,  who 
have  been  more  or  less  collectively  and  individu 
ally  with  me,  what  a  decent  English  season  can 
be.  ... 

Let  me  thank  you  again  for  your  allusion  to  the 
slightly  glamour-tinged,  but  more  completely  and 
consistently  forbidding  and  forbidden,  lecture  pos 
sibility.  I  refer  to  it  in  these  terms  because  in  the 
first  place  I  shouldn't  have  waited  till  now  for  it, 
but  should  have  waked  up  to  it  eleven  years  ago; 
and  because  in  the  second  there  are  other,  and  really 
stouter  things  too,  definite  ones,  I  want  to  do,  with 
which  it  would  formidably  interfere,  and  which  are 
better  worth  my  resolutely  attempting.  I  never 
have  had  such  a  sense  of  almost  bursting,  late  in 
the  day  though  it  be,  with  violent  and  lately  too 
much  repressed  creative  (again!)  intention.  I  may 
burst  before  this  intention  fairly  or  completely 
flowers,  of  course;  but  in  that  case,  even,  I  shall 
probably  explode  to  a  less  distressing  effect  than 
I  should  do,  under  stress  of  a  fatal  puncture,  on 
the  too  personally,  and  physically  arduous,  and 
above  all  too  gregariously-assaulted  (which  is  what 
makes  it  most  arduous)  lecture-platform.  There 
is  one  thing  which  may  conceivably  (if  it  comes 


AET.  65  TO  W.  D.  HOWELLS  103 

within  a  couple  of  years)  take  me  again  to  the  con- 
torni  of  Kittery;  and  on  the  spot,  once  more,  one 
doesn't  know  what  might  happen.  Then  I  should 
take  grateful  counsel  of  you  with  all  the  apprecia 
tion  in  the  world.  And  I  want  very  much  to  go 
back  for  a  certain  thoroughly  practical  and  special 
"artistic"  reason;  which  would  depend,  however, 
on  my  being  able  to  pass  my  time  in  an  ideal  com 
bination  of  freedom  and  quiet,  rather  than  in  a 
luridly  real  one  of  involved  and  exasperated  ex 
posure  and  motion.  But  I  may  still  have  to  talk  to 
you  of  this  more  categorically;  and  won't  worry 
you  with  it  till  then.  You  wring  my  heart  with 
your  report  of  your  collective  Dental  pilgrimage 
to  Boston  in  Mrs  Howells'  distressful  interest.  I 
read  of  it  from  your  page,  somehow,  as  I  read  of 
Siberian  or  Armenian  or  Macedonian  monstrosities, 
through  a  merciful  attenuating  veil  of  Distance 
and  Difference,  in  a  column  of  the  Times.  The 
distance  is  half  the  globe — and  the  difference  (for 
me,  from  the  dear  lady's  active  afflictedness)  that 
of  having  when  in  America  undergone,  myself,  so 
prolonged  and  elaborate  a  torture,  in  the  Chair  of 
Anguish,  that  I  am  now  on  t'other  side  of  Jordan 
altogether,  with  every  ghost,  even,  of  a  wincing 
nerve  extinct  and  a  horrible  inhuman  acheless  void 
installed  as  a  substitute.  Void  or  not,  however, 
I  hope  Mrs  Howells,  and  you  all,  are  now  acheless 
at  least,  and  am  yours,  my  dear  Howells,  ever  so 
faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 

P.S.  With  all  of  which  I  catch  myself  up  on 
not  having  told  you,  decently  and  gratefully,  of 
the  always  sympathetic  attention  with  which  I 
have  read  the  "Fennel  and  Rue"  you  so  gracefully 
dropped  into  my  lap  at  that  last  hour,  and  which 
I  had  afterwards  to  toy  with  a  little  distractedly 
before  getting  the  right  peaceful  moments  and  right 


104       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1908 

retrospective  mood  (this  in  order  to  remount  the 
stream  of  time  to  the  very  Fontaine  de  Jouvence 
of  your  subject-matter)  down  here.  For  what 
comes  out  of  it  to  me  more  than  anything  else  is 
the  charming  freshness  of  it,  and  the  general 
miracle  of  your  being  capable  of  this  under  the 
supposedly  more  or  less  heavy  bloom  of  a  rich 
maturity.  There  are  places  in  it  in  which  you  re 
cover,  absolutely,  your  first  fine  rapture.  You  con 
found  and  dazzle  me;  so  go  on  recovering — it  will 
make  each  of  your  next  things  a  new  document  on 
immortal  freshness!  I  can't  remount — but  can 
only  drift  on  with  the  thicker  and  darker  tide: 
wherefore  pray  for  me,  as  who  knows  what  may 
be  at  the  end? 


To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

October  13th,  1908. 
My  very  dear  Friend, 

I  cabled  you  an  hour  ago  my  earnest  hope 
that  you  may  see  your  way  to  sailing  ...  on  the 
20th — and  if  you  do  manage  that,  this  won't  catch 
you  before  you  start.  Nevertheless  I  can't  not 
write  to  you — however  briefly  (I  mean  on  the 
chance  of  my  letter  being  useless) — after  receiving 
your  two  last,  of  rapprochees  dates,  which  have 
come  within  a  very  few  days  of  each  other — that  of 
Oct.  5th  only  to-day.  I  am  deeply  distressed  at 
the  situation  you  describe  and  as  to  which  my  power 
to  suggest  or  enlighten  now  quite  miserably  fails 
me.  I  move  in  darkness ;  I  rack  my  brain ;  I  gnash 
my  teeth;  I  don't  pretend  to  understand  or  to 
imagine.  .  .  .  Only  sit  tight  yourself  and  go 
through  the  movements  of  life.  That  keeps  up  our 
connection  with  life — I  mean  of  the  immediate  and 
apparent  life;  behind  which,  all  the  while,  the 


AET.  65  TO  MRS.  WHARTON  105 

deeper  and  darker  and  unapparent,  in  which  things 
really  happen  to  us,  learns,  under  that  hygiene,  to 
stay  in  its  place.  Let  it  get  out  of  its  place  and 
it  swamps  the  scene;  besides  which  its  place,  God 
knows,  is  enough  for  itl  Live  it  all  through,  every 
inch  of  it — out  of  it  something  valuable  will  come 
— but  live  it  ever  so  quietly;  and — je  maintiens  mon 
dire — waitinglyl  .  .  .  What  I  am  really  hoping 
is  that  you'll  be  on  your  voyage  when  this  reaches 
the  Mount.  If  you're  not,  you'll  be  so  very  soon 
afterwards,  won't  you  ? — and  you'll  come  down  and 
see  me  here  and  we'll  talk  a  perte  de  vue,  and  there 
will  be  something  in  that  for  both  of  us.  ...  Be 
lieve  meanwhile  and  always  in  the  aboundingly 
tender  friendship — the  understanding,  the  partici 
pation,  the  princely  (though  I  say  it  who  shouldn't) 
hospitality  of  spirit  and  soul  of  yours  more  than 
ever, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  J.  B.  Pinker. 

By  this  time  the  monthly  issue  of  the  volumes  of  the 
"New  York"  edition  was  well  under  way — with  the  dis 
couraging  results  to  be  inferred  from  the  following  letter. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

October  23rd,  1908. 
My  dear  Pinker, 

All  thanks  for  your  letter  this  a.m.  received. 
I  have  picked  myself  up  considerably  since  Tues 
day  a.m.,  the  hour  of  the  shock,  but  I  think  it 
would  ease  off  my  nerves  not  a  little  to  see  you, 
and  should  be  glad  if  you  could  come  down  on 
Monday  next,  26th,  say — by  the  4.25,  and  dine 
and  spend  the  night.  If  Monday  isn't  convenient 
to  you,  I  must  wait  to  indicate  some  other  near 
subsequent  day  till  I  have  heard  from  a  person 


106       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1908 

who  is  to  come  down  on  one  of  those  dates  and 
whom  I  wish  to  be  free  of.  I  am  afraid  my  anti 
climax  has  come  from  the  fact  that  since  the  pub 
lication  of  the  Series  began  no  dimmest  light  or 
"lead"  as  to  its  actualities  or  possibilities  of  profit 
has  reached  me — whereby,  in  the  absence  of  special 
warning,  I  found  myself  concluding  in  the  sense 
of  some  probable  fair  return — beguiled  thereto  also 
by  the  measure,  known  only  to  myself,  of  the  treas 
ures  of  ingenuity  and  labour  I  have  lavished  on  the 
ameliorations  of  every  page  of  the  thing,  and  as 
to  which  I  felt  that  they  couldn't  not  somehow 
"tell."  I  warned  myself  indeed,  and  kept  down  my 
hopes — said  to  myself  that  any  present  payments 
would  be  moderate  and  fragmentary — very;  but 
this  didn't  prevent  my  rather  building  on  something 
that  at  the  end  of  a  very  frequented  and  invaded 
and  hospitable  summer  might  make  such  a  differ 
ence  as  would  outweigh — a  little — my  so  discon 
certing  failure  to  get  anything  from .  The 

non-response  of  both  sources  has  left  me  rather 
high  and  dry — though  not  so  much  so  as  when  I 
first  read  Scribner's  letter.  I  have  recovered  the 
perspective  and  proportion  of  things — I  have  com 
mitted,  thank  God,  no  anticipatory  follies  (the 
worst  is  having  made  out  my  income-tax  return  at 
a  distinctly  higher  than  at  all  warranted  figure! — 
whereby  I  shall  have  early  in  1909  to  pay — as  I 
even  did  last  year — on  parts  of  an  income  I  have 
never  received !)  — and,  above  all,  am  aching  in  every 
bone  to  get  back  to  out-and-out  "creative"  work, 
the  long  interruption  of  which  has  fairly  sickened 
and  poisoned  me.  (That  is  the  real  hitch!)  I  am 
afraid  that  moreover  in  my  stupidity  before  those 
unexplained — though  so  grim-looking! — figure-lists 
of  Scribner's  I  even  seemed  to  make  out  that  a 
certain  $211  (a  phrase  in  his  letter  seeming  also 
to  point  to  that  interpretation)  is,  all  the  same, 
owing  me.  But  as  you  say  nothing  about  this  I 


AET.  65  TO   J.    B.   PINKER  107 

see  that  I  am  probably  again  deluded  and  that  the 
mystic  screed  meant  it  is  still  owing  them!  Which 
is  all  that  is  wanted,  verily,  to  my  sad  rectification ! 
However,  I  am  now,  as  it  were,  prepared  for  the 
worst,  and  as  soon  as  I  can  get  my  desk  absolutely 
clear  (for,  like  the  convolutions  of  a  vast  smother 
ing  boa-constrictor,  such  voluminosities  of  Proof 
— of  the  Edition — to  be  carefully  read — still  keep 
rolling  in, )  that  mere  fact  will  by  itself  considerably 
relieve  me.  And  I  have  such  visions  and  arrears 
of  inspiration — !  But  of  these  we  will  speak — and, 
as  I  say,  I  shall  be  very  glad  if  you  can  come  Mon 
day.  Believe  me,  yours  ever, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Miss  Ellen  Emmet. 

H.  J.'s  interest  in  the  work  of  this  "paintress-cousin" 
(afterwards  Mrs.  Blanchard  Rand)  has  already  appeared 
in  a  letter  to  her  mother,  Mrs.  George  Hunter  (vol.  i,  p. 
258). 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

November  2d,  1908. 

...  I  have  taken  moments,  beloved  Bay, 
to  weep,  yes  to  bedew  my  pillow  with  tears,  over 
the  foul  wrong  I  was  doing  you  and  the  generous 
and  delightful  letter  I  so  long  ago  had  from  you— 
and  in  respect  to  whose  noble  bounty  your  present 
letter,  received  only  this  evening  and  already  mov 
ing  me  to  this  feverish  response,  is  a  heaping,  on 
my  unworthy  head,  of  coals  of  fire.  It  is  delight 
ful  at  any  rate,  dearest  Bay,  to  be  in  relation  with 
you  again,  and  to  hear  your  sweet  voice,  as  it  were, 
and  to  smell  your  glorious  paint  and  turpentine — 
to  inhale,  in  a  word,  both  your  goodness  and  your 
glory;  and  I  shall  never  again  consent  to  be  de 
prived  of  the  luxury  of  you  (long  enough  to  notice 
it)  on  any  terms  whatever.  .  .  . 


108       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1908 

November  3d.  I  had  to  break  off  last  night  and 
go  to  bed — and  as  it  is  now  much  past  mid-night 
again  I  shall  almost  surely  not  finish,  but  only 
scrawl  you  a  few  lines  more  and  then  take  you  up 
to  London  with  me  and  go  on  with  you  there,  as 
I  am  obliged  to  make  that  move,  for  a  few  days, 
by  the  9.30  a.m.  Among  the  things  I  have  to  do 
is  to  go  to  see  my  portrait  by  Jacques  Blanche  at 
the  Private  View  of  the  New  Gallery  autumn  show 
— he  having  "done"  me  in  Paris  last  May  (he  is 
now  quite  the  Bay  Emmet  of  the  London — in  par 
ticular — portrait  world,  and  does  all  the  billionaires 
and  such  like:  that's  where  Z  come  in — very  big 
and  fat  and  uncanny  and  "brainy"  and  awful  when 
I  last  saw  myself — so  that  I  now  quite  tremble  at 
the  prospect,  though  he  has  done  a  rather  wondrous 
thing  of  Thomas  Hardy — who,  however,  lends  him 
self.  I  will  add  a  word  to  this  after  I  have  been 
to  the  N.G.,  and  if  I  am  as  unnatural  as  I  fear, 
you  must  settle,  really,  to  come  out  and  avenge 
me.)  .  .  .  When  you  see  William,  to  get  on  again 
with  his  portrait — in  which  I  am  infinitely  and 
yearningly  interested — as  I  am  in  every  invisible 
stroke  of  your  brush,  over  which  I  ache  for  baffled 
curiosity  or  wonderment — when  you  do  go  on  to 
Cambridge  (sooner,  I  trust,  than  later)  he  and 
Alice  and  Peggy  will  have  much  to  tell  you  about 
their  quite  long  summer  here,  lately  brought  to  a 
close,  and  about  poor  little  old  Lamb  House  and 
its  corpulent,  slowly-circulating  and  slowly-masti 
cating  master.  It  was  an  infinite  interest  to  have 
them  here  for  a  good  many  weeks — they  are  such 
endlessly  interesting  people,  and  Alice  such  a 
heroine  of  devotion  and  of  everything.  We  have 
had  a  wondrous  season — a  real  golden  one,  for 
weeks  and  weeks — and  still  it  goes  on,  bland  and 
breathless  and  changeless — the  rarest  autumn  (and 
summer,  from  June  on)  known  for  years:  a  proof 
of  what  this  much-abused  climate  is  capable  of  for 


AET.  65      TO  MISS  ELLEN  EMMET  109 

benignity  and  convenience.  Dear  little  old  Lamb 
House  and  garden  have  really  become  very  pleas 
ant  and  developed  through  being  much  (and  vir 
tuously)  lived  in,  and  I  do  wish  you  would  come 
out  and  add  another  flourish  to  its  happy  sequel. 
But  I  must  go  to  bed,  dearest  Bay — I'm  ashamed 
to  tell  you  what  sort  of  hour  it  is.  But  I've  not 
done  with  you  yet. 

105  Pall  Mall.  November  6th.  I've  been  in 
town  a  couple  of  days  without  having  a  moment 
to  return  to  this — for  the  London  tangle  immedi 
ately  begins.  What  it  will  perhaps  most  interest 
you  to  know  is  that  I  "attended"  yesterday  the 
Private  View  of  the  Society  of  Portrait  Painters' 
Exhibition  and  saw  Blanche's  "big"  portrait  of 
poor  H.  J.  (His  two  exhibits  are  that  one  and 
one  of  himself — the  latter  very  flattered,  the 
former  not.)  The  "funny  thing  about  it"  is  that 
whereas  I  sat  in  almost  full  face,  and  left  it  on 
the  canvas  in  that  bloated  aspect  when  I  quitted 
Paris  in  June,  it  is  now  a  splendid  Profile,  and  with 
the  body  (and  more  of  the  body)  in  a  quite  differ 
ent  attitude;  a  wonderful  tour  de  force  (the  sort 
of  thing  you  ought  to  do  if  you  understand  your 
real  interest!) — consisting  of  course  of  his  having 
begun  the  whole  thing  afresh  on  a  new  canvas  after 
I  had  gone,  and  worked  out  the  profile,  in  my  ab 
sence,  by  the  aid  of  fond  memory  ("secret  notes" 
on  my  silhouette,  he  also  says,  surreptitiously  taken 
by  him)  and  several  photographs  (also  secretly 
taken  at  that  angle  while  I  sat  there  with  my  whole 
beauty,  as  I  supposed,  turned  on.  The  result  is 
wonderfully  "fine"  (for  me] — considering!  I  think 
one  sees  a  little  that  it's  a  chic' A  thing,  but  ever  so 
much  less  than  you'd  have  supposed.  He  dines 
with  me  to-night  and  I  will  get  him  to  give  me  two 
or  three  photographs  (of  the  picture,  not  of  me) 
and  send  them  to  you,  for  curiosity's  sake.  But 


110       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES 

I  really  think  that  (for  a  certain  style — of  presenta 
tion  of  H.  J. — that  it  has,  a  certain  dignity  of  in 
tention  and  of  indication — of  who  and  what,  poor 
creature,  he  is!)  it  ought  to  be  seen  in  the  U.S. 
He  (Blanche)  wants  to  go  there  himself — so  put 
in  all  your  own  triumphs  first.  However,  it  would 
kill  him — so  his  triumphs  would  be  brief ;  and  yours 
would  then  begin  again.  Meanwhile  he  was  almost 
as  agreeable  and  charming  and  beguiling  to  sit  to, 
as  you,  dear  Bay,  in  your  own  attaching  person — 
which  somebody  once  remarked  to  me  explained 
half  the  "run"  on  you!  .  .  .  Dear  Gaillard  Laps- 
ley  (I  hope  immensely  you'll  see  him  on  his  way 
to  Colorado  or  wherever)  has  given  me  occasional 
news  of  Eleanor  and  Elizabeth — in  which  I  have 
rejoiced — seeming  to  hear  their  nurseries  ring  with 
the  echo  of  their  prosperity.  As  they  must  now 
have  children  enough  for  them  to  take  care  of  each 
other  (haven't  they?)  I  hope  they  are  thinking  of 
profiting  by  it  to  come  out  here  again — where  they 
are  greatly  desired.  .  .  .  But,  beloved  Bay,  I  must 
get  this  off  now.  I  send  tenderest  love  to  the 
Mother  and  the  Sister;  I  beseech  you  not  to  let 
your  waiting  laurel,  here,  wither  ungathered,  and 
am  ever  your  fondest, 

HENRY  JAMES. 

To  George  Abbot  James. 

This  refers  to  the  death  of  Mrs.  G.  A.  James,  sister  of 
the  Hon.  H.  Cabot  Lodge,  Senior  Senator  for  Massa 
chusetts.  H.  J.'s  friendship  with  his  correspondent,  dating 
from  early  years,  is  commemorated  in  Notes  of  a  Son 
and  Brother. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

Nov.  26th,  1908. 
My  dear  old  Friend, 

Mrs.  Lodge  has  written  to  me,  and  I  have 
answered  her  letter,  but  I  long  very  particularly 
to  hold  out  my  hand  to  you  in  person,  and  take 


AET.  65    TO  GEORGE  ABBOT  JAMES         111 

your  own  and  keep  it  a  moment  ever  so  tenderly 
and  faithfully.  All  these  months  I  haven't  known 
of  the  blow  that  has  descended  on  you  or  I'm  sure 
you  feel  that  I  would  have  made  you  some  sign. 
My  communications  with  Boston  are  few  and  faint 
in  these  days — though  what  I  do  hear  has  in  general 
more  or  less  the  tragic  note.  You  must  have  been 
through  much  darkness  and  living  on  now  in  a 
changed  world.  I  hadn't  seen  her,  you  know,  for 
long  years,  and  as  I  have  just  said  to  Mrs.  Lodge, 
always  thought  of  her,  or  remembered  her,  as  I 
saw  her  in  youth — charming  and  young  and  bright, 
animated  and  eager,  with  life  all  before  her.  Great 
must  be  your  alteration.  I  wonder  about  you  and 
yet  spend  my  wonder  in  vain,  and  somehow  think 
we  were  meant  not  so  to  miss — during  long  years 
— sight  and  knowledge  of  each  other.  But  life 
does  strange  and  incalculable  things  with  us  all- 
life  which  I  myself  still  find  interesting.  I  have 
a  hope  that  you  do — in  spite  of  everything.  I  wish 
I  hadn't  so  awkwardly  failed,  practically,  of  see 
ing  you  when  I  was  in  America;  then  I  should  be 
better  able  to  write  to  you  now.  Make  me  some 
sign — wonderful  above  all  would  be  the  sign  that 
in  great  freedom  you  might  come  again  at  last  to 
these  regions  of  the  earth.  How  I  should  hold  out 
my  hands  to  you!  But  perhaps  you  stick,  as  it 
were,  to  your  past.  ...  I  don't  know,  you  see, 
and  I  can  only  make  you  these  uncertain,  yet  all 
affectionate  motions.  The  best  thing  I  can  tell 
you  about  myself  is  that  I  have  no  second  self  to 
part  with — having  lived  always  deprived!  But 
I've  had  other  things,  and  may  you  still  find  you 
have — a  few !  Don't  fail  of  feeling  me  at  any  rate, 
my  dear  George,  ever  so  tenderly  yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1908 


To  Hugh  Walpole. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
December  13th,  1908. 

My  dear  young  friend  Hugh  Walpole, 

I  had  from  you  some  days  ago  a  very  kind 
and  touching  letter,  which  greatly  charmed  me, 
but  which  now  that  I  wish  to  read  it  over  again 
before  belatedly  thanking  you  for  it  I  find  I  have 
stupidly  and  inexplicably  mislaid — at  any  rate  I 
can't  to-night  put  my  hand  on  it.  But  the  ex 
tremely  pleasant  and  interesting  impression  of  it 
abides  with  me;  I  rejoice  that  you  were  moved  to 
write  it  and  that  you  didn't  resist  the  generous 
movement — since  I  always  find  myself  (when  the 
rare  and  blest  revelation — once  in  a  blue  moon — 
takes  place)  the  happier  for  the  thought  that  I  en 
joy  the  sympathy  of  the  gallant  and  intelligent 
young.  I  shall  send  this  to  Arthur  Benson  with 
the  request  that  he  will  kindly  transmit  it  to  you — 
since  I  fail  thus,  provokingly,  of  having  your  ad 
dress  before  me.  I  gather  that  you  are  about  to 
hurl  yourself  into  the  deep  sea  of  journalism — 
the  more  treacherous  currents  of  which  (and  they 
strike  me  as  numerous)  I  hope  you  may  safely 
breast.  Give  me  more  news  of  this  at  some  con 
venient  hour,  and  let  me  believe  that  at  some  pro 
pitious  one  I  may  have  the  pleasure  of  seeing  you. 
I  never  see  A.  C.  B.  in  these  days,  to  my  loss  and 
sorrow — and  if  this  continues  I  shall  have  to  de 
pend  on  you  considerably  to  give  me  tidings  of 
him.  However,  my  appeal  to  him  (my  only  re 
source)  to  put  you  in  possession  of  this  will  per 
haps  strike  a  welcome  spark — so  you  see  you  are 
already  something  of  a  link.  Believe  me  very 
truly  yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


AET.  65    TO  GEORGE  ABBOT  JAMES        113 


To  George  Abbot  James. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

Dec.  21st,  1908. 
My  dear  dear  George — 

How  I  wish  I  might  for  a  while  be  with 
you,  or  that  you  were  here  a  little  with  me !  I  am 
deeply  touched  by  your  letter,  which  makes  me  feel 
all  your  desolation.  Clearly  you  have  lived  for 
long  years  in  a  union  so  close  and  unbroken  that 
what  has  happened  is  like  a  violent  and  unnatural 
mutilation  and  as  if  a  part  of  your  very  self  had 
been  cut  off,  leaving  you  to  go  through  the  move 
ments  of  life  without  it — movements  for  which  it 
had  become  to  you  indispensable.  Your  case  is 
rare  and  wonderful — the  suppression  of  the  other 
relations  and  complications  and  contacts  of  our 
common  condition,  for  the  most  part — and  such  as 
no  example  of  seems  possible  in  this  more  infring 
ing  and  insisting  world,  over  here — which  creates 
all  sorts  of  inevitabilities  of  life  round  about  one; 
perhaps  for  props  and  crutches  when  the  great 
thing  falls — perhaps  rather  toward  making  any 
one  and  absorbing  relation  less  intense — I  don't 
pretend  to  say!  But  you  sound  to  me  so  lonely — 
and  I  wish  I  could  read  more  human  furniture, 
as  it  were,  into  your  void.  And  I  can't  even  speak 
as  if  I  might  plan  for  seeing  you — or  dream  of  it 
with  any  confidence.  The  roaring,  rushing  world 
seems  to  me  myself — with  its  brutal  and  vulgar 
racket — all  the  while  a  less  and  less  enticing  place 
for  moving  about  in — and  I  ask  myself  how  one 
can  think  of  your  turning  to  it  at  this^late  hour,  and 
after  the  long  luxury,  as  it  were,  of  your  so  united 
and  protected  independence.  Still,  what  those  we 
so  love  have  done  for  us  doesn't  wholly  fail  us  with 
their  presence — isn't  that  true?  and  you  are  feel 
ing  it  at  times,  I'm  sure,  even  while  your  ache  is 


114       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       190* 

keenest.  In  fact  their  so  making  us  ache  is  one 
way  for  us  of  their  being  with  us,  of  our  holding 
on  to  them  after  a  fashion.  But  I  talk,  my  dear 
George,  for  mere  tenderness — and  so  I  say  vain 
words — with  only  the  fact  of  my  tenderness  a  small 
thing  to  touch  you.  I  have  known  you  from  so, 
far  back — and  your  image  is  vivid  and  charming 
to  me  through  everything — through  everything. 
Things  abide — good  things — for  that  time :  and  we 
hold  together  even  across  the  grey  wintry  sea,  near 
which  perhaps  we  both  of  us  are  to-night.  I  should 
have  a  lonely  Christmas  here  were  not  a  young 
nephew  just  come  to  me  from  his  Oxford  tutor's. 
You  don't  seem  to  have  even  that.  But  you  have 
the  affectionate  thought  of  yours  always, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  W.  E.  Norris. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

December  23rd,  1908. 
My  dear  Norris, 

I  have  immensely  rejoiced  to  hear  from  you 
to-night,  though  I  swear  on  my  honour  that  that 
has  nothing  to  do  with  this  inveterate — isn't  it? — 
and  essentially  pious  pleasure,  belonging  to  the 
date,  of  making  you  myself  a  sign.  I  have  had 
the  sad  sense,  for  too  long  past,  of  being  horrid, 
however  (of  never  having  acknowledged — at  the 
psychological  moment — your  beautiful  and  inter 
esting  last;)  and  it  has  been  for  me  as  if  I  should 
get  no  more  than  my  deserts  were  you  to  refuse 
altogether  any  more  commerce  with  me.  Your 
noble  magnanimity  lifting  that  shadow  from  my 
spirit,  I  perform  this  friendly  function  now,  with 
a  lighter  heart  and  a  restored  confidence.  Being 
horrid  (in  those  ways,)  none  the  less,  seems  to  an 
nounce  itself  as  my  final  doom  and  settled  attitude : 


AET.GS  TO  W.   E.   NORRIS  115 

I  grow  horrider  and  horrider  (as  a  correspondent) 
as  I  grow  more  aged  and  more  obese,  without  at 
the  same  time  finding  that  my  social  air  clears  itself 
as  completely  as  those  vices  or  disfigurements 
would  seem  properly  to  guarantee.  Most  of  my 
friends  and  relatives  are  dead,  and  a  due  propor 
tion  of  the  others  seem  to  be  dying;  in  spite  of  which 
my  daily  prospect,  these  many  months  past,  has 
bristled  almost  overwhelmingly  with  People,  and 
to  People  more  or  less  on  the  spot,  or  just  off  it, 
in  motors  (and  preparing  to  be  more  than  ever  on 
it  again,)  or,  most  of  all  haling  me  up  to  town  for 
feverish  and  expensive  dashes,  in  the  name  of  dam 
nable  and  more  than  questionable  duties,  interests, 
profits  and  pleasures — to  such  unaccountable  and 
irrepressible  hordes,  I  say,  I  keep  having  to  sacri 
fice  heavily.  The  world,  to  my  great  inconvenience 
— that  is  the  London  aggregation  of  it — insists  on 
treating  me  as  suburban — which  gives  me  thus  the 
complication  without  my  having  any  of  the  corre 
sponding  ease  (if  ease  there  be)  of  the  state;  and 
appalling  is  the  immense  incitement  to  that  sort  of 
invasion  or  expectation  that  the  universal  motor- 
use  (hereabouts)  compels  one  to  reckon  with.  But 
this  is  a  profitless  groan — drawn  from  me  by  a 
particularly  ravaged  summer  and  autumn,  as  it 
happens — and  at  a  season  of  existence  and  in  gen 
eral  conditions  in  which  one  had  fixed  one's  con 
fidence  on  precious  simplifications.  A  house  and 
a  little  garden  and  a  little  possible  hospitality,  in  a 
little  supposedly  picturesque  place  60  miles  from 
London  are,  in  short,  stiff  final  facts  that  (in  our 
more  and  more  awful  age)  utterly  decline  to  be 
simplified — and  here  I  sit  in  the  midst  of  them  and 
exhale  to  you  (to  you  almost  only!)  my  helpless 
plaint.  Fortunately,  for  the  moment,  I  take  the 
worst  to  be  over.  I've  a  young — a  very  young — 
American  nephew  who  has  come  to  me  from  his 
Oxford  tutor  to  spend  Xmas,  and  I  have,  in  order 


116       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1908 

to  amuse  him,  engaged  to  go  with  him  to-morrow 
and  remain  till  Saturday  with  some  friends  six 
miles  hence;  but  after  that  I  cling  to  the  vision  of 
a  great  stretch  of  undevastated  time  here  till  April, 
or  better  still  May,  when  I  may  go  up  to  town  for 
a  month.  Absorbing  occupations — the  only  ones 
I  really  care  for — await  me  in  abysmal  arrears — 
but  I  spare  you  my  further  overflow. 

It  has  kept  me  really  all  this  time  from  saying 
to  you  what  I  had  infinitely  more  on  my  mind — 
how  my  sense  of  your  Torquay  life,  with  all  that 
violent  sadness,  that  great  gust  of  extinction, 
breathed  upon  it,  has  kept  you  before  me  as  a  sub 
ject  of  much  affectionate  speculation.  Of  course 
you've  picked  up  your  life  after  a  fashion;  but 
we  never  pick  up  all — too  much  of  it  lies  there 
broken  and  ended.  But  I  seem  to  see  you  going 
on,  as  you're  so  gallantly  capable  of  doing,  in  the 
manner  of  one  for  whom  nothing  more  has  hap 
pened  than  you  were  naturally  prepared  for  in 
a  world  that  you  decently  abstain  from  characteriz 
ing — and  I  congratulate  you  again  on  your  mastery 
of  the  art  of  life — of  the  Torquay  variety  of  it  in 
particular.  (We  have  to  decide  on  the  kind  we 
will  master — but  I  haven't  mastered  this  kind!) 
I  at  any  rate  saw  Gosse  in  town  some  three  weeks 
ago,  and  he  spoke  of  having  seen  you  not  long 
previous  and  of  the  excellent  figure  you  made  to 
him.  (I  didn't  know  you  were  there — but  indeed 
a  certain  turmoil  about  me  here — speaking  as  a 
man  loving  his  own  hours  and  his  own  company — 
must  have  been  then,  I  think,  at  its  thickest.)  .  .  . 
I  hope  something  or  other  pleasant  has  brushed 
you  with  its  wing — and  even  that  you've  been  able 
to  put  forth  a  quick  hand  and  seize  it.  If  so,  keep 
tight  hold  of  it — nurse  it  in  your  bosom — for  1909 
— and  believe  me,  my  dear  Norris,  yours  always 
and  ever, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


AET.  65      TO  MRS.  HENRY  WHITE  117 


To  Mrs.  Henry  White. 

Mr.  White  was  at  this  time  American  Ambassador  in 
Paris. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

Dec.  29,  1908. 
Dearest  Margaret  White, 

I  sit  here  to-night,  I  quite  crouch  by  my 
homely  little  fireside,  muffled  in  soundless  snow 
—where  the  loud  tick  of  the  clock  is  the  only 
sound — and  give  myself  up  to  the  charmed  sense 
that  in  your  complicated  career,  amid  all  the  more 
immediate  claims  of  the  bonne  annee,  you  have 
been  moved  to  this  delightful  sign  of  remembrance 
of  an  old  friend  who  is  on  the  whole,  and  has  always 
been,  condemned  to  lose  so  much  more  of  you 
(through  divergence  of  ways!)  than  he  has  been 
privileged  to  enjoy.  Snatches,  snatches,  and  happy 
and  grateful  moments — and  then  great  empty 
yearning  intervals  only — and  under  all  the  great 
ebbing,  melting,  and  irrecoverableness  of  life !  But 
this  is  almost  a  happy  and  grateful  moment — al 
most  a  real  one,  I  mean — though  again  with  bris 
tling  frontiers,  long  miles  of  land  and  water,  doing 
their  best  t6  make  it  vain  and  fruitless.  You  live 
on  the  crest  of  the  wave,  and  I  deep  down  in  the 
hollow — and  your  waves  seem  to  be  all  crests,  just 
as  mine  are  only  concave  formations !  I  feel  at  any 
rate  very  much  in  the  hollow  these  winter  months 
— when  great  adventures,  like  Paris,  look  far  and 
formidable,  and  I  see  a  domestic  reason  for  sitting 
tight  wherever  I  turn  my  eyes.  That  reads  as  if 
I  had  thirteen  children — or  thirty  wives — instead 
of  being  so  lone  and  lorn ;  but  what  it  means  is  that 
I  have,  in  profusion,  modest,  backward  labours. 
We  have  been  having  here  lately  the  great  and 
glorious  pendulum  in  person,  Mrs.  Wharton,  on 
her  return  oscillation,  spending  several  weeks  in 


118       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1908 

England,  for  almost  the  first  time  ever  and  having 
immense  success — so  that  I  think  she  might  fairly 
fix  herself  here — if  she  could  stand  it!  But  she  is 
to  be  at  58  Rue  de  Varenne  again  from  the  New 
Year  and  you  will  see  her  and  she  will  give  you 
details.  My  detail  is  that  though  she  has  kindly 
asked  me  to  come  to  them  again  there  this  month 
or  spring  I  have  had  to  plead  simple  abject  terror — 
terror  of  the  pendulous  life.  I  am  a  stopped  clock 
— and  I  strike  (that  is  I  caper  about)  only  when 
very  much  wound  up.  Now  I  don't  have  to  be 
wound  up  at  all  to  tell  you  what  a  yearning  I  have 
to  see  you  all  back  here — and  what  a  kind  of  sturdy 
faith  that  I  absolutely  shall.  Then  your  crest  will 
be  much  nearer  my  hollow,  and  vice  versa,  and  you 
will  be  able  to  look  down  quite  straight  at  me,  and 
we  shall  be  almost  together  again — as  we  really 
must  manage  to  be  for  these  interesting  times  to 
come.  I  don't  want  to  miss  any  more  Harry's 
freshness  of  return  from  the  great  country — with 
the  golden  apples  of  his  impression  still  there  on 
the  tree.  I  have  always  only  tasted  them  plucked 
by  other  hands  and — baked!  I  want  to  munch 
these  with  you — en  famille.  Therefore  I  confi 
dently  await  and  evoke  you.  I  delight  in  these 
proofs  of  strength  of  your  own  and  am  yours  al 
ways  and  ever, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  W.  D.  Howells. 

H.  J.'s  tribute  to  the  memory  of  his  old  friend,  Pro 
fessor  C.  E.  Norton,  is  included  in  Notes  on  Novelists. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

New  Year's  Eve,  1908. 
My  dear  Howells, 

I  have  a  beautiful  Xmas  letter  from  you 
and  I  respond  to  it  on  the  spot.    It  tells  me  charm- 


AET.  65  TO  W.  D.  HO  WELLS  119 

ing  things  of  you — such  as  your  moving  majesti 
cally  from  one  beautiful  home  to  another,  appar 
ently  still  more  beautiful;  such  as  the  flow  of  your 
inspiration  never  having  been  more  various  and 
more  torrential — and  all  so  deliciously  remuner 
ated  an  inspiration;  such  as  your  having  been  on 
to  dear  C.  E.  N.'S  obsequies — what  a  Cambridge 
date  that,  even  for  you  and  me — and  having  also 
found  time  to  see  and  "appreciate"  my  dear  col 
laterals,  of  the  two  generations  (aren't  they  ex 
traordinarily  good  and  precious  collaterals?)  ;  such, 
finally,  as  your  recognising,  with  so  fine  a  charity, 
a  "message"  in  the  poor  little  old  "Siege  of  Lon 
don,"  which,  in  all  candour,  affects  me  as  pretty 
dim  and  rococo,  though  I  did  lately  find,  in  going 
over  it,  that  it  holds  quite  well  together,  and  I 
touched  it  up  where  I  could.  I  have  but  just  come 
to  the  end  of  my  really  very  insidious  and  ingenious 
labour  on  behalf  of  all  that  series — though  it  has 
just  been  rather  a  blow  to  me  to  find  that  I've  come 
(as  yet)  to  no  reward  whatever.  I've  just  had 
the  pleasure  of  hearing  from  the  Scribners  that 
though  the  Edition  began  to  appear  some  13  or  14 
months  ago,  there  is,  on  the  volumes  already  out, 
no  penny  of  profit  owing  me — of  that  profit  to 
which  I  had  partly  been  looking  to  pay  my  New 
Year's  bills!  It  will  have  landed  me  in  Bankruptcy 
— unless  it  picks  up ;  for  it  has  prevented  my  doing 
any  other  work  whatever;  which  indeed  must  now 
begin.  I  have  fortunately  broken  ground  on  an 
American  novel,  but  when  you  draw  my  ear  to  the 
liquid  current  of  your  own  promiscuous  abundance 
and  facility — a  flood  of  many  affluents — I  seem  to 
myself  to  wander  by  contrast  in  desert  sands.  And 
I  find  our  art,  all  the  while,  more  difficult  of  prac 
tice,  and  want,  with  that,  to  do  it  in  a  more  and 
more  difficult  way;  it  being  really,  at  bottom,  only 
difficulty  that  interests  me.  Which  is  a  most  ac 
cursed  way  to  be  constituted.  I  should  be  passing 


120       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       loos 

a  very — or  a  rather — inhuman  little  Xmas  if  the 
youngest  of  my  nephews  (William's  minor e — aged 
18 — hadn't  come  to  me  from  the  tutor's  at  Oxford 
with  whom  he  is  a  little  woefully  coaching.  But 
he  is  a  dear  young  presence  and  worthy  of  the  rest 
of  the  brood,  and  I've  just  packed  him  off  to  the 
little  Rye  annual  subscription  ball  of  New  Year's 
Eve — at  the  old  Monastery — with  a  part  of  the 
"county"  doubtless  coming  in  to  keep  up  the  tradi 
tion — under  the  sternest  injunction  as  to  his  not 
coming  back  to  me  "engaged"  to  a  quadragenarian 
hack  or  a  military  widow — the  mature  women  be 
ing  here  the  greatest  dancers. — You  tell  me  of 
your  "Roman  book,"  but  you  don't  tell  me  you've 
sent  it  me,  and  I  very  earnestly  wish  you  would — 
though  not  without  suiting  the  action  to  the  word. 
And  anything  you  put  forth  anywhere  or  anyhow 
that  looks  my  way  in  the  least,  I  should  be  ten 
derly  grateful  for.  ...  I  should  like  immensely 
to  come  over  to  you  again — really  like  it  and  for 
uses  still  ( !  !)  to  be  possible.  But  it's  practically, 
materially,  physically  impossible.  Too  late — too 
late !  The  long  years  have  betrayed  me — but  I  am 
none  the  less  constantly  yours  all, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Edward  Lee  Childe. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

[Jan.  8,  1909.] 
My  dear  old  Friend, 

Please  don't  take  my  slight  delay  in  thank 
ing  you  for  your  last  remembrance  as  representing 
any  limit  to  the  degree  in  which  it  touches  me.  You 
are  faithful  and  courtois  and  gallant,  in  this  un 
ceremonious  age,  to  the  point  of  the  exemplary  and 
the  authoritative — in  the  sense  that  v ous  y  faites 
autorite,  and  only  the  multitudinous  waves  of  the 


AET.  65     TO  EDWARD  LEE  CHILDE          121 

Christmastide  and  the  New  Year's  high  tide,  as 
all  that  matter  lets  itself  loose  in  this  country,  have 
kept  me  from  landing  (correspondentially  speak 
ing)  straight  at  your  door.  I  like  to  know  that 
you  so  admirably  keep  up  your  tone  and  your  tem 
per,  and  even  your  interest,  and  perhaps  even  as 
much  your  general  faith  (as  I  try  for  that  matter 
to  do  myself),  in  spite  of  disconcerting  years  and 
discouraging  sensations — once  in  a  way  perhaps' 
in  spite,  briefly,  of  earthquakes  and  newspapers 
and  motor-cars  and  aeroplanes.  I  myself,  frankly, 
have  lost  the  desire  to  live  in  a  situation  (by  which 
I  mean  in  a  world)  in  which  I  can  be  invaded  from 
so  many  sides  at  once.  I  go  in  fear,  I  sit  ex 
posed,  and  when  the  German  Emperor  carries  the 
next  war  (hideous  thought)  into  this  country,  my 
chimney-pots,  visible  to  a  certain  distance  out  at 
sea,  may  be  his  very  first  objective.  You  may  say 
that  that  is  just  a  good  reason  for  my  coming  to 
Paris  again  all  promptly  and  before  he  arrives — 
and  indeed  reasons  for  coming  to  Paris,  as  for 
doing  any  other  luxurious  or  licentious  thing,  never 
fail  me:  the  drawback  is  that  they  are  all  of  the 
sophisticating  sort  against  which  I  have  much  to 
brace  myself.  If  you  were  to  see  from  what  you 
summon  me,  it  would  be  brought  home  to  you  that 
a  small  rude  Sussex  burgher  must  feel  the  strain 
of  your  Parisian  high  pitch,  haute  elegance,  general 
glittering  life  and  conversation ;  the  strain  of  keep 
ing  up  with  it  all  and  mingling  in  the  fray.  .  .  . 

Let  me  thank  you,  further,  for  indicating  to 
me  the  new  volumes  by  the  Duchesse  de  Dino — 
what  a  wealth  of  such  stored  treasures  does  the 
French  world  still,  at  this  time  of  day,  produce — 
when  one  would  suppose  the  sack  had  been  again 
and  again  emptied.  The  Literary  Supplement  of 
this  week's  Times  has  a  sympathetic  review  of  the 
book — which  I  shall  send  for  by  reason  of  the 
Duchess  and  the  English  reminiscences,  and  not 


LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1909 

for  any  sake  of  Talleyrand,  who  always  affects  me 
as  a  repulsive  figure,  such  as  I  couldn't  have  borne 
to  be  in  the  same  room  with.  I  should  have  asked 
you,  had  I  lately  had  a  preliminary  chance,  for  a 
word  of  news  of  Paul  Harvey  and  whether  he  is 
actually  or  still  in  Egypt.  ...  I  wish  Madame 
Marie  all  peace  and  plenty  for  the  coming  year 
— though  I  am  not  sure  I  envy  her  Lausanne  in 
January.  But  I  am  yours  and  hers  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Hugh  Walpole. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
March  28th,  1909. 

My  dear  Hugh, 

I  have  had  so  bad  a  conscience  on  your  score, 
ever  since  last  writing  to  you  with  that  as  yet  un 
redeemed  promise  of  my  poor  image  or  effigy,  that 
the  benignity  of  your  expressions  has  but  touched 
me  the  more.  On  coming  to  look  up  some  decent 
photograph  among  the  few  odds  and  ends  of  such 
matters  to  be  here  brought  out  of  hiding,  I  found 
nothing  that  wasn't  hateful  to  me  to  put  into  circu 
lation.  I  have  been  very  little  and  very  ill  (always 
very  ill)  represented — and  not  at  all  for  a  long 
time,  and  shall  never  be  again;  and  of  the  two  or 
three  disinherited  illustrations  of  that  truth  that  I 
have  put  away  for  you  to  choose  between  you  must 
come  here  and  make  selection,  yourself  carrying 
them  off.  My  reluctant  hand  can't  bring  itself  to 
"send"  them.  Heaven  forbid  such  sendings! 

Can  you  come  some  day— some  Saturday — in 
April? — I  mean  after  Easter.  Bethink  yourself, 
and  let  it  be  the  17th  or  the  24th  if  possible.  (I 
expect  to  go  up  to  town  for  four  or  five  weeks 
the  1st  May.)  You  are  keeping  clearly  such  a 
glorious  holiday  now  that  I  fear  you  may  hate  to 


AET.  65  TO  HUGH  WALPOLE  123 

begin  again;  but  you'll  have  with  me  in  every  way 
much  shorter  commons,  much  sterner  fare,  much 
less  purple  and  fine  linen,  and  in  short  a  much  more 
constant  reminder  of  your  mortality  than  while 
you  loll  in  A.  C.  B.'s  chariot  of  fire.  Therefore, 
as  I  say,  come  grimly  down.  Loll  none  the  less, 
however,  meanwhile,  to  your  utmost — such  oppor 
tunities,  I  recognise,  are  to  be  fondly  cherished. 
If  you  give  A.  C.  B.  this  news  of  me,  please  assure 
him  with  my  love  that  I  am  infinitely,  that  I  am 
yearningly  aware  of  that.  He'd  see  soon  enough 
if  he  were  some  day  to  let  me  loll.  However  I  am 
going  to  Cambridge  for  some  as  yet  undetermined 
48  hours  in  May,  and  if  he  will  let  me  loll  for  one  y 
of  those  hours  at  Magdalene  it  will  do  almost  as 
well — I  mean  of  course  he  being  there.  However, 
even  if  he  does  flee  at  my  approach — and  the 
possession  of  a  fleeing-machine  must  enormously 
prompt  that  sort  of  thing — I  rejoice  immensely 
meanwhile  that  you  have  the  kindness  of  him;  I 
am  magnanimous  enough  for  that.  Likewise  I  am 
tender-hearted  enough  to  be  capable  of  shedding 
tears  of  pity  and  sympathy  over  young  Hugh  on 
the  threshold  of  fictive  art — and  with  the  long  and 
awful  vista  of  large  production  in  a  largely  pro 
ducing  world  before  him.  Ah,  dear  young  Hugh, 
it  will  be  very  grim  for  you  with  your  faithful  and 
dismal  friend, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

April  19th,  1909. 
My  dear  Edith, 

I  thank  you  very  kindly  for  your  so  humane 
and  so  interesting  letter,  even  if  I  must  thank  you 
a  little  briefly — having  but  this  afternoon  got  out 


124       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1009 

of  bed,  to  which  the  Doctor  three  days  ago  con 
signed  me — for  a  menace  of  jaundice,  which  ap 
pears  however  to  have  been,  thank  heaven,  averted ! 
(I  once  had  it,  and  basta  cost;)  so  that  I  am  a  little 
shaky  and  infirm.  You  give  me  a  sense  of  end 
less  things  that  I  yearn  to  know  more  of,  and  I 
clutch  hard  the  hope  that  you  will  indeed  come  to 
England  in  June.  I  have  had — to  be  frank — a  bad 
and  worried  and  depressed  and  inconvenient  win 
ter — with  the  serpent-trail  of  what  seemed  at  the 
time — the  time  you  kindly  offered  me  a  princely 
hospitality — a  tolerably  ominous  cardiac  crisis — 
as  to  which  I  have  since,  however,  got  considerable 
information  and  reassurance — from  the  man  in 
London  most  completely  master  of  the  subject — 
that  is  of  the  whole  mystery  of  heart-troubles.  I 
am  definitely  better  of  that  condition  of  December- 
January,  and  really  believe  I  shall  be  better  yet; 
only  that  particular  brush  of  the  dark  wing  leaves 
one  never  quite  the  same — and  I  have  not,  I  con 
fess  (with  amelioration,  even,)  been  lately  very 
famous;  (which  I  shouldn't  mention,  none  the  less, 
were  it  not  that  I  really  believe  myself,  for  definite 
reasons,  and  intelligent  ones,  on  the  way  to  a  much 
more  complete  emergence — both  from  the  above- 
mentioned  and  from  other  worries.)  So  much 
mainly  to  explain  to  you  my  singularly  unsympa 
thetic  silence  during  a  period  of  anxiety  and  dis 
comfort  on  your  own  part  which  I  all  the  while 
feared  to  be  not  small — but  which  I  now  see,  with 
all  affectionate  participation,  to  have  been  extreme. 
I  ...  Sit  loose  and  live  in  the  day — don't  borrow 
trouble,  and  remember  that  nothing  happens  as  we 
forecast  it — but  always  with  interesting  and,  as 
it  were,  refreshing  differences.  "Tired"  you  must 
be,  even  you,  indeed ;  and  Paris,  as  I  look  at  it  from 
here,  figures  to  me  a  great  blur  of  intense  white 
light  in  which,  attached  to  the  hub  of  a  revolving 
wheel,  you  are  all  whirled  round  by  the  finest  silver 


AET.  66  TO  MRS.  WHARTON  125 

strings.  "Mazes  of  heat  and  sound"  envelop  you 
to  my  wincing  vision — given  over  as  I  am  to  a 
craven  worship  (only  henceforth)  of  peace  at  any 
price.  This  dusky  village,  all  deadening  grey  and 
damp  (muffling)  green,  meets  more  and  more  my 
supreme  appreciation  of  stillness — and  here,  in 
June,  you  must  come  and  find  me — to  let  me  em 
phasize  that — appreciation! — still  further.  You'll 
rest  with  me  here  then,  but  don't  wait  for  that  to 
rest  somehow — somewhere  en  attendant.  I  am 
afraid  you  won't  rest  much  in  a  retreat  on  the 
Place  de  la  Concorde.  However,  so  does  a  poor 
old  croaking  barnyard  fowl  advise  a  golden 
eagle!  .  .  . 

I   am,   dearest   Edith,   all  constantly   and  ten 
derly  yours, 

HENKY  JAMES. 


To  Arthur  Christopher  Benson. 

Queen's  Acre,  Windsor. 

June  5th,  1909. 
My  dear  Arthur, 

Howard  S.  has  given  me  so  kind  a  message 
from  you  that  it  is  like  the  famous  coals  of  fire  on 
my  erring  head — renewing  my  rueful  sense  of  hav 
ing  suffered  these  last  days  to  prolong  the  too 
graceless  silence  that  I  have,  in  your  direction, 
been  constantly  intending  and  constantly  failing 
to  break.  It  isn't  only  that  I  owe  you  a  letter,  but 
that  I  have  exceedingly  wanted  to  write  it — ever 
since  I  began  (too  many  weeks  ago)  to  feel  the 
value  of  the  gift  that  you  lately  made  me  in  the 
form  of  the  acquaintance  of  delightful  and  inter 
esting  young  Hugh  Walpole.  He  has  been  down 
to  see  me  in  the  country,  and  I  have  had  renewed 
opportunities  of  him  in  town — the  result  of  which 
is  that,  touched  as  I  am  with  his  beautiful  candour 
of  appreciation  of  my  "feeble  efforts,"  etc.,  I  feel 


126       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1909 

for  him  the  tender est  sympathy  and  an  absolute 
affection.  I  am  in  general  almost — or  very  often 
— sorry  for  the  intensely  young,  intensely  confident 
and  intensely  ingenuous  and  generous — but  I  some 
how  don't  pity  him,  for  I  think  he  has  some  gift  to 
conciliate  the  Fates.  I  feel  him  at  any  rate  an 
admirable  young  friend,  of  the  openest  mind  and 
most  attaching  nature,  and  anything  I  can  ever  do 
to  help  or  enlighten,  to  guard  or  guide  or  comfort 
him,  I  shall  do  with  particular  satisfaction,  and 
with  a  lively  sense  of  being  indebted  to  you  for  the 
interesting  occasion  of  it.  Of  these  last  circum 
stances  please  be  very  sure. 

I  go  to  Cambridge  next  Friday,  for  almost  the 
first  time  in  my  life — to  see  a  party  of  three  friends 
whom  I  am  in  the  singular  position  of  never  hav 
ing  seen  in  my  life  ( I  shall  be  for  two  or  three  days 
with  Charles  Sayle,  8  Trumpington  Street,)  and 
I  confess  to  a  hope  of  finding  you  there  (if  so  be 
it  you  can  by  chance  be;)  though  if  you  flee  before 
the  turmoil  of  the  days  in  question,  when  every 
thing,  I  am  told,  is  at  concert  pitch,  I  won't  insist 
that  I  shan't  have  understood  it.  If  you  are,  at 
any  rate,  at  Magdalene  I  should  like  very  much 
to  knock  at  your  door,  and  see  you  face  to  face 
for  half-an-hour ;  if  that  may  be  possible.  And  I 
won't  conceal  from  you  that  I  should  like  to  see 
your  College  and  your  abode  and  your  genre  de  vie 
— even  though  your  countenance  most  of  all.  If 
you  are  not,  in  a  manner,  well,  as  Howard  hints  to 
me,  I  shan't  (perhaps  I  can't  I)  make  you  any 
worse — and  I  may  make  you  a  little  better.  Medi 
tate  on  that,  and  do,  in  the  connection,  what  you 
can  for  me.  Boldly,  at  any  rate,  shall  I  knock; 
and  if  you  are  absent  I  shall  yearn  over  the  sight 
of  your  ancient  walls. 

I  am  spending  a  dark,  cold,  dripping  Sunday 
here — with  two  or  three  other  amis  de  la  maison; 
but  above  all  with  the  ghosts,  somehow,  of  a  pro- 


AET.  66       TO  ARTHUR  C.  BENSON  127 

miscuous  past  brushing  me  as  with  troubled  wings, 
and  the  echoes  of  the  ancient  years  seeming  to 
murmur  to  me:  "Don't  you  wish  you  were  still 
young — or  young  again — even  as  they  so  wonder 
fully  are?"  (my  fellow-visitors  and  inexhaustibly 
soft-hearted  host.)  I  don't  know  that  I  particu 
larly  do  wish  it — but  the  melancholy  voices  (I 
mean  the  inaudible  ones  of  the  loquacious  saloon) 
have  thus  driven  me  to  a  rather  cold  room  (my 
own)  of  refuge,  to  invoke  thus  scratchily  your  fine 
friendly  attention  and  to  reassure  you  of  the  con 
stant  sympathy  and  fidelity  of  yours,  my  dear 
Arthur,  all  gratefully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Charles  Sayle. 

For  several  years  past  H.  J.  had  received  a  New  Year 
greeting  from  three  friends  at  Cambridge — Mr.  Charles 
Sayle,  Mr.  A.  T.  Bartholomew,  Mr.  Geoffrey  Keynes — 
none  of  whom  he  had  met  till  he  went -up  to  Cambridge 
this  month  to  stay  with  Mr.  Sayle  during  May-week.  It 
was  on  this  occasion  that  he  first  met  Rupert  Brooke.  ~ 

Reform  Club,  Pall  Mall,  S.W. 
June  16th,  1909. 

My  dear  Charles  Sayle, 

I  want  to  send  you  back  a  grateful — and 
graceful — greeting — and  to  let  you  all  know  that 
the  more  I  think  over  your  charming  hospitality 
and  friendly  labour  and  (so  to  speak)  loyal  service, 
the  more  I  feel  touched  and  convinced.  My  three 
days  with  you  will  become  for  me  a  very  precious 
little  treasure  of  memory — they  are  in  fact  already 
taking  their  place,  in  that  character,  in  a  beautiful 
little  innermost  niche,  where  they  glow  in  a  golden 
and  rose-coloured  light.  I  have  come  back  to 
sterner  things;  you  did  nothing  but  beguile  and 


128       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1909 

waylay — making  me  loll,  not  only  figuratively, 
but  literally  (so  unforgettably — all  that  wondrous 
Monday  morning),  on  perfect  surfaces  exactly 
adapted  to  my  figure.  For  their  share  in  these 
generous  yet  so  subtle  arts  please  convey  again  my 
thanks  to  all  concerned — and  in  particular  to  the 
gentle  Geoffrey  and  the  admirable  Theodore,  with 
a  definite  stretch  toward  the  insidious  Rupert — 
with  whose  name  I  take  this  liberty  because  I  don't 
know  whether  one  loves  one's  love  with  a  (sur 
name  terminal)  e  or  not.  Please  take  it  from  me, 
all,  that  I  shall  live  but  to  testify  to  you  further, 
and  in  some  more  effective  way  than  this — my  de 
sire  for  which  is  as  a  long  rich  vista  that  can  only 
be  compared  to  that  adorable  great  perspective  of 
St.  John's  Gallery  as  we  saw  it  on  Saturday  after 
noon.  Peace  then  be  with  you — I  hope  it  came 
promptly  after  the  last  strain  and  stress  and  all 
the  rude  porterage  (so  appreciated!)  to  which  I 
subjected  you.  I'll  fetch  and  carry,  in  some 
fashion  or  other,  for  you  yet,  and  am  ever  so  faith 
fully  yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 

P.S.  Just  a  momentary  drop  to  meaner  things 
— to  say  that  I  appear  to  have  left  in  my  room  a 
sleeping-suit  (blue  and  white  pyjamas — jacket  and 
trousers,)  which,  in  the  hurry  of  my  departure  and 
my  eagerness  to  rejoin  you  a  little  in  the  garden 
before  tearing  myself  away,  I  probably  left  folded 
away  under  my  pillows.  If  your  brave  House 
keeper  (who  evaded  my  look  about  for  her  at  the 
last)  will  very  kindly  make  of  them  such  a  little 
packet  as  may  safely  reach  me  here  by  parcels' 
post  she  will  greatly  oblige  yours  again  (and 
hers), 

H.  J. 


AET.  66     TO  MRS.  W.  K.  CLIFFORD          129 
To  Mrs.  W.  K.  Clifford. 

The  two  plays  on  which  H.  J.  was  at  work  were  The 
Other  House  (written  many  years  before  and  now  revised) 
and  The  Outcry. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
July  19th,  1909. 

Dearest  Lucy  CI 

I  have  been  a  prey  to  agitations  and  com 
plications,  many  assaults,  invasions  and  inconve 
niences,  since  leaving  town — whereby  I  have  had 
to  put  off  thanking  you  for  two  brilliant  letters. 
And  yet  I  have  wanted  to  write — to  tell  you  (ex 
plaining)  how  I  found  myself  swallowed  up  by 
one  social  abyss  after  another,  and  tangled  in  a 
succession  of  artful  feminine  webs,  at  Stafford 
House  that  evening,  so  that  I  couldn't  get  into 
touch  with  you,  or  with  Ethel,  again,  before  you 
were  gone,  as  I  found  when  I  finally  made  a  dash 
for  you.  That  too  was  very  complicated,  and 
evening-parties  bristle  with  dangers.  .  .  .  The  very 
critical  business  of  the  final  luminous  copy  is,  how 
ever,  coming  to  an  end — I  mean  the  arriving  at  the 
utterly  last  intense  reductions  and  compressions. 
So  much  has  to  come  out,  however,  that  I  am 
sickened  and  appalled — and  this  sacrifice  of  the 
very  life-blood  of  one's  play,  the  mere  vulgar 
anatomy  and  bare-bones  poverty  to  which  one  has 
to  squeeze  it  more  and  more,  is  the  nauseating  side 
of  the  whole  desperate  job.  In  spite  of  which  I 
am  interesting  myself  deeply  in  the  three  act 
comedy  I  have  undertaken  for  Frohman — and 
which  I  find  ferociously  difficult — but  with  a  diffi 
culty  that,  thank  God,  draws  me  on  and  fascinates. 
If  I  can  go  on  believing  in  my  subject  I  can  go  on 
treating  it;  but  sometimes  I  have  a  mortal  chill 
and  wonder  if  I  ain't  damnably  deluded.  How 
ever,  the  balance  inclines  to  faith  and  I  think  it 


130       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES        1909 

works  out.  You  shall  hear  what  comes  of  it — 
even  at  the  worst.  Meanwhile  for  yourself,  dearest 
Lucy,  buck  up  and  patiently  woo  the  Muse.  She 
responds  at  last  always  to  true  and  faithful 
wooing — to  the  right  artful  patience — and  turns 
upon  one  the  smile  from  which  light  breaks.  I 
have  been  reading  over  the  Long  Duel  (which  I 
immediately  return) — with  a  sense  of  its  having 
great  charm  and  care  of  execution,  and  quality  and 
grace,  but  also,  dear  Lucy,  of  its  drawbacks  for 
practical  prosperity.  The  greatest  of  these  seems 
to  me  to  be  fundamental — to  reside  in  the  fact  that 
the  subject  isn't  dramatic,  that  it  deals  with  a  state, 
a  position,  a  situation  (of  the  "static"  kind),  and 
not,  save  in  a  very  minor  degree,  with  an  action, 
a  progression;  which  fact,  highly  favourable  to  it 
for  a  tale,  a  psychologic  picture,  is  detrimental  to 
its  tenseness — to  its  being  matter  for  a  play  and 
developed  into  4  acts.  A  play  appears  to  me  of 
necessity  to  involve  a  struggle,  a  question  (of 
whether,  and  how,  will  it  or  won't  it  happen?  and 
if  so,  or  not  so,  how  and  why? — which  we  have  the 
suspense,  the  curiosity,  the  anxiety,  the  tension, 
in  a  word,  of  seeing;  and  which  means  that  the 
whole  thing  shows  an  attack  upon  oppositions — 
with  the  victory  or  the  failure  on  one  side  or  the 
other,  and  each  wavering  and  shifting,  from  point 
to  point.)  But  your  hero  is  thus  not  an  agent,  he 
is  passive,  he  doesn't  take  the  field.  I  say  all  this 
because  I  think  there  is  light  on  the  matter  of  the 
history  of  the  fate  of  the  play  in  it — and  also  think 
that  there  are  other  elements  of  disadvantage  for 
the  piece  too.  The  elderly  (or  almost?)  French 
artist  with  a  virtuous  love-sorrow  doesn't,  for  the 
B.P.,  belong  to  the  actual;  he's  romantic,  and  old- 
fashionedly  romantic,  and  remote;  and  the  case  is 
aggravated  by  the  corresponding  maturity  of  the 
heroine.  You  will  say  that  there  is  the  young 
couple,  and  what  comes  of  their  being  there,  and 


AET.  66     TO  MRS.  W.  K.  CLIFFORD  131 

their  "action";  but  the  truth  about  that,  I  fear,  is 
that  innocent  young  lovers  as  such,  and  not  as  be 
ing  engaged  in  other  difficulties  and  with  other 
oppositions  (of  their  own,)  have  practically  ceased 
to  be  a  dramatic  value — aren't  any  longer  an  ele 
ment  or  an  interest  to  conjure  with.  Don't  hate 
me  for  saying  these  things — for  working  them  out 
critically,  and  so  far  as  may  be,  illuminatingly,  in 
face  of  the  difficulty  the  L.D.  seems  to  have  had 
in  getting  itself  brought  out.  We  are  dealing  with 
an  art  prodigiously  difficult  and  arduous  every  way 
— and  in  which  one  seems  most  of  all  to  sink  into 
a  Sea  of  colossal  Waste.  I'm  not  sure  that  The 
Other  House,  after  all  my  not-to-be-reckoned 
labour  and  calculation  on  it,  isn't  (to  be)  wasted. 
But  these  are  dreary  words — it  is  much  past  mid 
night.  I  am  damned  critical — for  it's  the  only 
thing  to  be,  and  all  else  is  damned  humbug.  But 
I  don't  mean  a  douche  of  cold  water,  and  am  ever 
so  tenderly  and  faithfully  yours, 

HENKY  JAMES. 


To  Miss  Grace  Norton. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

August  10th,  1909. 

....  I  break  ground  with  you  thus,  dear 
Grace,  late  in  the  evening  (too  late — for  I  shall  soon 
have  to  go  most  belatedly  to  bed)  of  a  singularly 
beautiful  and  glowingly  hot  summer's  day — one 
of  a  succession  that  August  has  at  last  brought 
us  (and  with  more,  apparently,  in  store,)  after  a 
wholly  damnable  June  and  July,  a  hideous  ordeal 
of  wet  and  cold.  English  fine  weather  is  worth 
waiting  for — it  is  so  sovereign  in  quality  when  it 
comes,  and  the  capacity  of  this  little  place  of  a  few 
marked  odd  elements  to  become  charming,  to  shine 
and  flush  and  endear  itself,  is  then  so  admirable. 


132       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1909 

I  went  out  for  my  afternoon  walk  under  stress  of 
having  promised  my  good  little  gardener  (a  real 
pearl  of  price — these  eleven  years — in  the  way  of 
a  serving-man)  to  come  and  witness  his  possible 
triumphs  at  our  annual  little  horticultural  show, 
given  this  year  in  some  charming  private  grounds 
on  a  high  hill  overlooking  our  little  huddled  (and 
lower-hilled)  purple  town.  There  I  found  myself 
in  the  extraordinary  position — save  that  other  sum 
mers  might — but  haven't — softened  the  edge  of  the 
monstrosity — of  seeing  "Henry  James  Esq."  figure 
on  thirteen  large  cards  commemorative  of  first, 
second  and  third  prizes — and  of  more  first,  even, 
if  you  can  believe  it,  than  the  others.  It  always 
[seems]  to  point,  more  than  anything  else,  the  mor 
al,  for  me,  of  my  long  expatriation  and  to  put 
its  "advantages"  into  a  nutshell.  In  what  corner 
of  our  native  immensity  could  I  have  fallen — 
and  practically  without  effort,  helpless  ignoramus 
though  I  be — into  the  uncanny  flourish  of  a  swell 
at  local  flower  shows  ?  Here  it  has  come  of  itself — 
and  it  crowns  my  career.  How  I  wish  you  weren't 
too  far  away  for  me  to  send  you  a  box  of  my  vic 
torious  carnations  and  my  triumphant  sweet  peas! 
However,  I  remember  your  telling  me  with  em 
phasis  long  years  ago  that  you  hated  "cut  flowers," 
and  I  have  treasured  your  brave  heresy  (the  mem 
ory  of  it)  so  ineffaceably  so  as  to  find  support  in 
it  always,  and  fine  precedent,  for  a  very  lukewarm 
adhesion  to  them  myself,  except  for  a  slight  in 
consistency  in  the  matter  of  roses  and  sweet  peas 
(both  supremely  lovable,  I  think,  in  their  kind,) 
which  increase  and  multiply  and  bless  one  in  pro 
portion  as  one  tears  them  from  the  stem.  How 
ever,  it's  1.30  a.m.  o'clock — and  I  am  putting  this 
to  bed;  till  to-morrow  night  again,  when  I  shall 
pull  it  forth  and  add  to  its  yearning  volume.  I 
have  to  write  at  night,  and  even  late  at  night — to 
write  letter-things  at  all;  for  the  simple  reason  of 


AET.  66     TO  MISS  GRACE  NORTON  133 

being  so  vilely  constituted  for  work  that  when  my 
regularly  recurring  morning  stint  is  done  (from 
after  breakfast  to  luncheon-time,)  I  am  "done" 
utterly,  and  so  cerebrally  spent  (with  the  effort  to 
distil  "quality"  for  three  or  four  hours,)  that  I 
can't  touch  a  pen  till  as  much  as  possible  of  the 
day  has  elapsed,  to  build  out  and  disconnect  my 
morning's  association  with  it.  That  is  one  reason 
— and  always  has  been — of  my  baseness  as  a  corre 
spondent.  The  question  is  whether  the  effect  I 
produce  as  a  "story  writer"  is  of  a  nature  to  make 
up  for  it.  You  will  say  "most  certainly  not!" — 
and  who  shall  blame  you?  But  goodnight  and 
a  demain. 

August  llth.  I  don't  mean  this  to  be  a  diary 
— but  it  has  been  another  splendid  summer  day— 
and  I  am  wondering  if  you  sit  in  the  loose  but 
warm  embrace  of  bowery  Cambridge.  Every  now 
and  then  I  read  in  the  Times  of  "92°  in  the  shade 
in  America,"  and  Cambridge  is  so  intensely  your 
America  that  I  ask  myself — though  my  imagina 
tion  breaks  down  in  the  effort  to  place  you  any 
where,  even  as  I  write  again,  by  my  late  ticking 
clock,  in  this  hot  stillness,  [but]  in  the  vine-tangled 
porch  where  I  sat  so  often  anciently,  but  only  a 
little,  alas,  that  other  more  often  and  more  variously 
hindered  year.  It  has  been  almost  92°  in  the  shade, 
or  has  almost  felt  like  it  here  to-day;  in  spite  of 
which  I  took — and  enjoyed — a  long  slow  walk  over 
the  turf  by  our  tidal  "channel"  here  (which  goes 
straight  forth  to  the  channel,  and  over  to  France, 
at  the  end  of  a  mile  or  two,  and  has  a  beautiful 
colour  at  the  flow.)  .  .  .  I'm  spending  a  very  quiet 
summer,  to  which  the  complete  absence  of  any 
visiting  or  sojourning  relative  (a  frequent  and 
prized  feature  with  me  most  other  years)  gives  a 
rather  melancholy  blankness.  But  I'm  hoping  for 
a  nephew  or  two — William's  Bill,  that  is,  next 
month ;  and  meanwhile  the  season  melts  in  my  grasp 


134       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1009 

and  ebbs  with  an  appalling  rush  (don't  you  find, 
at  our  age?),  for  there  are  still  things  I  want  to 
do,  and  I  ask  myself,  at  such  a  rate,  How?  I 
lately,  as  I  think  I've  mentioned,  spent  a  couple 
of  months  in  London,  and  saw  as  much  as  I  could 
of  Sally  and  Lily,  whom  I  found  most  agreeable, 
and  confirmed  in  their  respective  types  of  charm  and 
character.  Lily  is  still  in  England — and  of  course 
you  know  all  about  her — I  hope  to  have  her  with 
me  here  before  long  for  a  couple  of  days.  But 
there  is  nothing  I  more  wonder  at,  dear  Grace, 
than  the  question  of  what  Cambridge  has  become 
to  you,  or  seems  to  you,  without  (practically)  a 
Shady  Hill,  after  the  long  years.  It  must  be,  al 
together,  much  of  a  changed  world — and  thus,  afar 
off,  I  wonder.  It  is  a  way  of  getting  again  into 
communication  with  you,  or  at  any  rate  of  making 
you  a  poor  wild  and  wandering  sign,  as  over  broken 
and  scarce  sounding  wires,  of  the  perfect  affection 
ate  fidelity  of  your  firm  old  friend,  my  dear  Grace, 
of  all  and  all  the  wonderful  years, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  William  James. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
Aug.  17th,  1909. 
Dearest  William, 

I  respond  without  delay  to  the  blessing  of 
your  letter  of  the  6th — which  gives  me  so  general 
a  good  impression  of  you  all  that  I  must  somehow 
celebrate  it.  I  like  to  think  of  your  tranquil — if 
the  word  be  the  least  applicable  !-^Chocorua  sum 
mer;  and  as  the  time  of  year  comes  round  again 
of  my  sole  poor  visit  there  (my  mere  fortnight  from 
September  1st  1904),  the  yearning  but  baffled 
thought  of  being  with  you  on  that  woodland  scene 
and  at  the  same  season  once  more  tugs  at  my  sen- 


66 


TO  WILLIAM  JAMES  135 


sibilities  and  is  almost  too  much  for  me.  I  have 
the  sense  of  my  then  leaving  it  all  unsated,  after  a 
beggarly  snatch  only,  and  of  how  I  might  have 
done  with  so  much  more  of  it.  But  I  shall  pretty 
evidently  have  to  do  with  what  I  got.  The  very 
smell  and  sentiment  of  the  American  summer's  end 
there  and  of  Alice's  beautiful  "rustic"  hospitality 
of  overflowing  milk  and  honey,  to  say  nothing  of 
squash  pie  and  ice-cream  in  heroic  proportions,  all 
mingle  for  me  with  the  assault  of  forest  and  lake 
and  of  those  delicious  orchardy,  yet  rocky  vague 
nesses  and  Arcadian  "nowheres,"  which  are  the 
note  of  what  is  sweetest  and  most  attaching  in  the 
dear  old  American,  or  particularly  New  England, 
scenery.  It  comes  back  to  me  as  with  such  a  mag^  ' 
nificent  beckoning  looseness  —  in  relieving  contrast 
to  the  consummate  tightness  (a  part,  too,  oddly,  of 
the  very  wealth  of  effect)  du  pays  d'ici.  It  isn't 
however,  luckily,  that  I  have  really  turned  "agin" 
my  landscape  portion  here,  for  never  so  much  as 
this  summer,  e.g.,  have  I  felt  the  immensely  noble, 
the  truly  aristocratic,  beauty  of  this  splendid  county 
of  Sussex,  especially  as  the  winged  car  of  offence 
has  monstrously  unfolded  it  to  me.j  This  afternoon 
an  amiable  neighbour,  Mrs.  Richard  Hennessy, 
motored  me  over  to  Hurstmonceux  Castle,  which, 
in  spite  of  its  being  but  about  ten  miles  "back  of" 
Hastings,  and  not  more  than  twenty  from  here,  I 
had  never  yet  seen.  It's  a  prodigious  romantic 
ruin,  in  an  adorable  old  ruined  park  ;  but  the  splen 
dour  of  the  views  and  horizons,  and  of  the  rich 
composition  and  perpetual  picture  and  inexhaus 
tible  detail  of  the  country,  had  never  more  come 
home  to  me.  I  don't  do  such  things,  however, 
every  day,  thank  goodness,  and  am  having  the  very 
quietest  summer,  I  think,  that  has  melted  away  for 
me  (how  they  do  melt!)  since  I  came  to  live  here. 
I  miss  the  tie  of  consanguinity  —  that  I  have  so  often 
felt!  —  and  now  (especially  since  your  letter,  for 


136       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1909 

you  mention  his  other  plans)  I  find  myself  calling 
on  the  hoped-for  Bill  in  vain.  We  lately  have  had 
(it  broke  but  yesterday)  a  splendid  heated  term — 
very  highly  heated — following  on  a  wholly  detest 
able  June  and  July  and  having  lasted  without  a 
lapse  the  whole  month  up  to  now — which  has  been 
admirable  and  enjoyable  and  of  a  renewed  conse 
cration  to  this  dear  little  old  garden.  I  hope  it 
hasn't  broken  for  good,  as  complications,  of  sorts, 
loom  for  me  next  month — but  the  high  possibility 
is  that  we  shall  still  have  earned,  and  have  suffered 
for  in  advance,  a  fine  August-end  and  September. 
My  window  is  open  wide  even  now — but  to  the 
blustering,  softly-storming,  south-windy  midnight. 
And  through  thick  and  thin  I  have  been  very 
quietly  and  successfully  working.  It  all  pans  out, 
I  think,  in  a  very  promising  way,  but  it  is  too  "im 
portant"  for  me  to  chatter  about  save  on  the  proved, 
or  proveable,  basis  that  now  seems  rather  largely 
to  await  it.  And  I  grow,  I  think,  small  step  by 
small  step,  physically  easier  and  easier,  and  seem 
to  know,  pretty  steadily,  more  and  more  where  I 
am.  ...  I  have  been  following  you  and  Alice  in 
imagination  to  the  kind  and  beautiful  Intervale 
hospitality — my  charming  taste  of  which  has  re 
mained  with  me  ever  so  gratefully  and  uneff acedly, 
please  tell  the  Merrimans  when  you  have  another 
chance.  You  tell  me  that  Alice  and  Harry  lift  all 
practical  burdens  from  your  genius — than  which 
they  surely  couldn't  have  a  nobler  or  a  more  inspir 
ing  task; — but  what  a  fate  and  a  fortune  yours 
too — to  have  an  Alice  reinforced  by  a  Harry,  and 
a  Harry  multiplied  by  an  Alice !  L'un  vaut  1'autre 
— as  they  appear  to  me  in  the  wondrous  harmony. 
You  don't  mention  Harry's  getting  to  you  at  all — 
but  my  mind  recoils  with  horror  from  the  thought 
that  he  is  not  in  these  days  getting  somewhere. 
It's  a  blow  to  me  to  learn  that  Bill  is  again  to 
hibernate  in  Boston — but  softened  by  what  you 


AET.  66  TO  WILLIAM  JAMES  137 

so  delightfully  tell  me  of  your  portrait  and  of  the 
nature  and  degree  of  his  progress.  If  he  can  do 
much  and  get  on  so  there,  why  right  he  is  of  course 
to  stay — and  most  interesting  is  it  to  learn  that  he 
can  do  so  much ;  I  wish  I  could  see  something — and 
can't  your  portrait  be  photographed?  But  I  lately 
wrote  to  him  appealingly;  and  he  will  explain  to 
me  all  things.  Admirable  your  evocation  of  the 
brave  and  brown  and  beautiful  Peg — of  whom  I 
wish  I  weren't  so  howlingly  deprived.  But  please 
tell  her  I  drench  her  with  her  old  uncle's  proudest 
and  fondest  affection.  I  hang  tenderly  over  Aleck 
— while  he,  poor  boy,  hangs  so  toughly  over  God 
knows  what— and  fervently  do  I  pray  for  him. 
And  you  and  Alice  I  embrace. 

Ever  your  HENRY. 


To  H.  G.  Wells. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
October  14th,  1909. 

My  dear  Wells, 

I  took  down  Ann  Veronica  in  deep  rich 
draughts  during  the  two  days  following  your  mag-  •/ 
nanimous  "donation"  of  her,  and  yet  have  waited 
till  now  to  vibrate  to  you  visibly  and  audibly  under 
that  pressed  spring.  I  never  vibrated  under  any 
thing  of  yours,  on  the  whole,  I  think,  more  than 
during  that  intense  inglutition;  but  if  I  have  been 
hanging  fire  of  acclamation  and  comments,  as  I 
hung  it,  to  my  complete  self-stultification  and  be 
yond  recovery,  over  Tono-Bungay,  it  is  simply 
because,  confound  you,  there  is  so  much  too  much 
to  say,  always,  after  everything  of  yours;  and  the 
critical  principle  so  rages  within  me  (by  which  I 
mean  the  appreciative,  the  real  gustatory,)  that  I 
tend  to  labour  under  the  superstition  that  one  must 


138       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1909 

always  say  all.  But  I  can't  do  that,  and  I  won't — 
so  that  I  almost  intelligently  and  coherently  choose, 
which  simplifies  a  little  the  question.  And  nothing 
matters  after  the  fact  that  you  are  to  me  so  much 
the  most  interesting  representational  and  ironic 
genius  and  faculty,  of  our  Anglo-Saxon  world  and 
life,  in  these  bemuddled  days,  that  you  stand  out 
intensely  vivid  and  alone,  making  nobody  else 
signify  at  all.  And  this  has  never  been  more  the 
case  than  in  A.V.,  where  your  force  and  life  and 
ferocious  sensibility  and  heroic  cheek  all  take  effect 
in  an  extraordinary  wealth  and  truth  and  beauty 
and  fury  of  impressionism.  The  quantity  of  things 
done,  in  your  whole  picture,  excites  my  liveliest 
admiration — so  much  so  that  I  was  able  to  let  my 
self  go,  responsively  and  assentingly,  under  the 
strength  of  the  feeling  communicated  and  the  im 
petus  accepted,  almost  as  much  as  if  your  "method," 
and  fifty  other  things — by  which  I  mean  sharp 
questions  coming  up — left  me  only  passive  and  con 
vinced,  unchallenging  and  uninquiring  (which  they 
don't — no,  they  don't!)  I  don't  think,  as  regards 
this  latter  point,  that  I  can  make  out  what  your 
subject  or  Idea,  the  prime  determinant  one,  may  be 
detected  as  having  been  (lucidity  and  logic,  on  that 
score,  not,  to  my  sense,  reigning  supreme.)  But 
there  I  am  as  if  I  were  wanting  to  say  "all"! — 
which  I'm  not  now,  I  find,  a  bit.  I  only  want  to 
say  that  the  thing  is  irresistible  (or  indescribable) 
in  its  subjective  assurance  and  its  rare  objective 
vividness  and  colour.  You  must  at  moments  make 
dear  old  Dickens  turn — for  envy  of  the  eye  and 
the  ear  and  the  nose  and  the  mouth  of  you — in  his 
grave.  I  don't  think  the  girl  herself — her  projected 
Ego — the  best  thing  in  the  book — I  think  it  rather 
wants  clearness  and  nuances.  But  the  men  are 
prodigious,  all,  and  the  total  result  lives  and  kicks 
and  throbs  and  flushes  and  glares — I  mean  hangs 
there  in  the  ve*y  air  we  breathe,  and  that  you  are 


AET.  66  TO  H.  G.  WELLS  139 

a  very  swagger  performer  indeed  and  that  I  am 
your  very  gaping  and  grateful 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Miss  Henrietta  Reubell. 

Crapy  Cornelia,  embodiment  of  the  New  York  of  H.  J.'s 
youth,  will  be  remembered  as  one  of  the  stories  in  The 
Finer  Grain. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
Oct.  19,  1909. 

Dearest    Etta   Reubell  —  my   very    old    friend 

indeed  1 

Your  letter  charms  and  touches  me,  and 
I  rejoice  you  were  moved  to  write  it.  You  have 
understood  "Crapy  Cornelia" — and  people  so  very 
often  seem  not  to  understand — that  that  alone  gives 
me  pleasure.  But  when  you  tell  me  also  of  my 
now  living,  really,  in  green  and  gold,  in  the  dear 
little  old  Petit  Salon  and  almost  resting  on  the 
beloved  red  velvet  sofa  on  which — in  other  days— 
I  so  often  myself  have  rested,  and  which  figures 
to  me  as  the  basis  or  background  of  a  hundred  de 
lightful  hours,  the  tears  quite  rise  to  my  eyes  and 
I  have  a  sense  of  success  in  life  that  few  other 
things  have  ever  given  me.  I  have  not  had  a  very 
good  year — a  baddish  crisis  about  a  twelvemonth 
ago;  but  I  have  gradually  worked  out  of  it  and  the 
prospect  ahead  is  fairer.  I  really  think  I  shall 
even  be  able  to  come  and  see  you,  and  sit  on  the  im 
memorial  sofa,  and  see  my  kind  and  serried  shelves 
play  their  part  in  your  musee  and  figure  as  a  class 
by  Themselves  among  your  relics — and  to  have  that 
emotion  I  am  capable  of  a  great  effort.  I  have 
great  occasional  bouffees  of  fond  memory  and 
longing  from  our  dear  old  past  Paris.  It  affects 
me  as  rather  ghosty;  but  life  becomes  more  and 


140       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1009 

more  that,  and  I  have  learnt  to  live  with  my  pale 
spectres  more  than  with  my  ruddy  respirers.  They 
will  sit  thick  on  the  old  red  sofa.  But  with  you  the 
shepherdess  of  the  flock  it  will  be  all  right.  You 
are  not  Cornelia,  but  I  am  much  White-Mason, 
and  I  shall  again  sit  by  your  fire. 
Your  tout-devoue 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  William  James. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

October  31st,  1909. 
Dearest  William, 

I  have  beautiful  communications  from  you 
all  too  long  unacknowledged  and  unrequited — 
though  I  shall  speak  for  the  present  but  of  the 
two  most  prized  letters  from  you  (from  Cambridge 
and  Chocorua  respectively — not  counting  quaint 
sequels  from  Franconia,  "autumn-tint"  post-cards 
etc.,  a  few  days  ago,  or  thereabouts,  and  leaving 
aside  altogether,  but  only  for  later  fond  treatment, 
please  assure  them,  an  admirable  one  from  Harry 
and  an  exquisite  one  from  Bill.)  To  these  I  add 
the  arrival,  still  more  recently,  of  your  brave  new 
book,  which  I  fell  upon  immediately  and  have  quite 
passionately  absorbed — to  within  50  pages  of  the 
end;  a  great  number  previous  to  which  I  have  read 
this  evening — which  makes  me  late  to  begin  this. 
I  find  it  of  thrilling  interest,  triumphant  and  bril 
liant,  and  am  lost  in  admiration  of  your  wealth  and 
power.  I  palpitate  as  you  make  out  your  case 
(since  it  seems  to  me  you  so  utterly  do,)  as  I  un 
der  no  romantic  spell  ever  palpitate  now;  and  into 
that  case  I  enter  intensely,  unreservedly,  and  I 
think  you  would  allow  almost  intelligently.  I  find 
you  nowhere  as  difficult  as  you  surely  make  every 
thing  for  your  critics.  Clearly  you  are  winning  a 


AET.  66  TO  WILLIAM  JAMES  141 

great  battle  and  great  will  be  your  fame.  Your 
letters  seem  to  me  to  reflect  a  happy  and  easy  sum 
mer  achieved — and  I  recognise  in  them  with  rap 
ture,  and  I  trust  not  fallaciously,  a  comparative 
immunity  from  the  horrid  human  incubi,  the  awful 
"people"  fallacy,  of  the  past,  and  your  ruinous 
sacrifices  to  that  bloody  Moloch.  May  this  lumi 
nous  exemption  but  grow  and  grow!  and  with  it 
your  personal  and  physical  peace  and  sufficiency, 
your  profitable  possession  of  yourself.  Amen, 
amen — over  which  I  hope  dear  Alice  hasn't  lieu  to 
smile!  .  .  . 

November  1st.  I  broke  this  off  last  night  and 
went  to  bed — and  now  add  a  few  remarks  after 
a  grey  soft  windless  and  miraculously  rainless  day 
(under  a  most  rainful  sky,)  which  has  had  rather 
a  sad  hole  made  in  it  by  a  visitation  from  a  young 
person  from  New  York.  .  .  .  [who]  stole  from  me 
the  hour  or  two  before  my  small  evening  feed  in 
which  I  hoped  to  finish  "The  Meaning  of  Truth"; 
but  I  have  done  much  toward  this  since  that  repast, 
and  with  a  renewed  eagerness  of  inglutition.  You 
surely  make  philosophy  more  interesting  and  living 
than  anyone  has  ever  made  it  before,  and  by  a  real 
creative  and  undemolishable  making;  whereby  all 
you  write  plays  into  my  poor  "creative"  conscious 
ness  and  artistic  vision  and  pretension  with  the  most 
extraordinary  suggestiveness  and  force  of  applica 
tion  and  inspiration.  Thank  the  powers — that  is 
thank  yours! — for  a  relevant  and  assimilable  and 
referable  philosophy,  which  is  related  to  the  rest 
of  one's  intellectual  life  otherwise  and  more  con 
veniently  than  a  fowl  is  related  to  a  fish.  In  short, 
dearest  William,  the  effect  of  these  collected  papers 
of  your  present  volume — which  I  had  read  all  in 
dividually  before — seems  to  me  exquisitely  and 
adorably  cumulative  and,  so  to  speak,  consecrating; 
so  that  I,  for  my  part  feel  Pragmatic  invulner 
ability  constituted.  Much  will  this  suffrage  help 


142       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1909 

the  cause ! — Not  less  inspiring  to  me,  for  that  mat 
ter,  is  the  account  you  give,  in  your  beautiful  letter 
of  October  6th,  from  Chocorua,  of  Alice  and  the 
offspring,  Bill  and  Peggot  in  particular,  confirm 
ing  so  richly  all  my  previous  observation  of  the 
Son  and  letting  in  such  rich  further  lights  upon  the 
Daughter.  ...  I  mean  truly  to  write  her  straight 
and  supplicate  her  for  a  letter.  .  .  . 

.  .  .  But  good-night  again — as  my  thoughts 
flutter  despairingly  (of  attainment)  toward  your 
farawayness,  under  the  hope  that  the  Cambridge 
autumn  is  handsome  and  wholesome  about  you.  I 
yearn  over  Alice  to  the  point  of  wondering  if  some 
day  before  Xmas  she  may  find  a  scrap  of  a  moment 
to  testify  to  me  a  little  about  the  situation  with  her 
now  too  unfamiliar  pen.  Oh  if  you  only  can  next 
summer  come  out  for  two  years !  This  home  shall 
be  your  fortress  and  temple  and  headquarters  as 
never,  never,  even,  before.  I  embrace  you  all — I 
send  my  express  love  to  Mrs.  Gibbens — and  am 
your  fondest  of  brothers, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
[December  13th,  1909.] 
Dear  Edith, 

I'm  horribly  in  arrears  with  you  and  it 
hideously  looks  as  if  I  hadn't  deeply  revelled  and 
rioted  in  your  beautiful  German  letter  in  particular 
— which  thrilled  me  to  the  core.  You  are  indeed 
my  ideal  of  the  dashing  woman,  and  you  never 
dashed  more  felicitously  or  fruitfully,  for  my 
imagination,  than  when  you  dashed,  at  that  par 
ticular  psychologic  moment,  off  to  dear  old  rococo 
Munich  of  the  "Initials"  (of  my  tender  youth,) 
and  again  of  my  far-away  30th  year.  (I've  never 


AET.  GO  TO  MRS.  WHARTON  143 

been  there  depuis. )  Vivid  and  charming  and  sym 
pathetic  au  possible  your  image  and  echo  of  it  all; 
only  making  me  gnash  my  teeth  that  I  wasn't  with 
you,  or  that  at  least  I  can't  ply  you,  face  to  face, 
with  more  questions  even  than  your  letter  delight 
fully  anticipates.  It  came  to  me  during  a  fort 
night  spent  in  London — and  all  letters  that  reach 
me  there,  when  I'm  merely  on  the  branch,  succeed 
in  getting  themselves  treasured  up  for  better  at 
tention  after  I'm  back  here.  But  the  real  difficulty 
in  meeting  your  gorgeous  revelations  as  they  de 
serve  is  that  of  breaking  out  in  sympathy  and 
curiosity  at  points  enough — and  leaping  with  you 
breathless  from  Schiller  to  Tiepolo — through  all 
the  Gothicry  of  Augsburg,  Wurzburg,  und  so 
weiter.  I  want  the  rest,  none  the  less — all  the  rest, 
after  Augsburg  and  the  Weinhandlung,  and  above 
all  how  it  looks  to  you  from  Paris  (if  not  Paradise) 
regained  again — in  respect  to  which  gaping  con 
trast  I  am  immensely  interested  in  your  superlative 
commendation  of  the  ensemble  and  well-doneness 
of  the  second  play  at  Munich  (though  it  is  at  Cabale 
und  Licbe  that  I  ache  and  groan  to  the  core  for 
not  having  been  with  you.)  It  is  curious  how  a 
strange  deep-buried  Teutonism  in  one  (without 
detriment  to  the  tropical  forest  of  surface,  and 
half -way-down,  Latinism)  stirs  again  at  moments 
under  stray  Germanic  souffles  and  makes  one  so 
far  from  being  sorry  to  be  akin  to  the  race  of  Goethe 
and  Heine  and  Diirer  and  their  kinship.  At  any 
rate  I  rejoice  that  you  had  your  plunge — which 
(the  whole  pride  and  pomp  of  which)  makes  me 
sit  here  with  the  feeling  of  a  mere  aged  British 
pauper  in  a  workhouse.  However,  of  course  I 
shan't  get  real  thrilling  and  throbbing  items  and 
illustrations  till  I  have  them  from  your  lips:  to 
which  remote  and  precarious  possibility  I  must 
resign  myself.  .  .  .  And  now  I  am  back  here  for 
— I  hope — many  weeks  to  come;  having  a  morbid 


144       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1909 

taste  for  some,  even  most — though  not  all — of  the 
midwinter  conditions  of  this  place.  Turkeys  and 
mince  pies  are  being  accumulated  for  Xmas,  as 
well  as  calendars,  penwipers,  and  formidable  lists 
of  persons  to  whom  tips  will  be  owing;  a  fine  old 
Yuletide  observance  in  general,  quoi!  .  .  .  But 
good  night — tanti  saluti  affetuosi. 

Ever  your 

H.  J. 


To  Madame  Wagniere. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
Dec.  22nd,  1909. 

My  dear  Laura  Wagniere, 

The  general  turmoil  of  the  year's  end  has 
done  its  best  to  prevent  my  sooner  expressing  to 
you  my  great  rejoicing  in  all  the  pleasantness  of 
your  news  of  your  settled  state  by  the  "plus  beau 
des  lacs" ;  a  consummation  on  which  I  heartily  con 
gratulate  you  both.  A  real  rest,  for  the  soles  of 
one's  feet,  a  receptacle  and  domestic  temple  for 
one's  battered  possessions,  is  what  I  myself  found, 
better  than  I  had  ever  found  it  before,  some  dozen 
years  ago  in  t his  decent  nook,  and  I  feel  I  can  only 
wish  you  to  even  get  half  as  much  good  of  it  as  I 
have  got  of  my  small  impregnable  stronghold — or 
better  still,  incorruptible  hermitage.  Yours  isn't  a 
hermitage  of  course,  since  hermits  don't — in  spite 
of  St.  Anthony  and  his  famous  complications  (or 
rather  and  doubtless  by  reason  of  them) — have 
wives  or  female  friends :  and  very  holy  women  don't 
even  have  husbands. 

But  it's  evidently  a  delightful  place,  on  which 
I  cast  my  benediction  and  which  I  shall  rejoice 
some  day  to  see,  so  that  you  must  let  me  tenderly 
nourish  the  hope.  I  have  always  had,  and  from 
far  back,  my  premiere  jeimesse,  a  great  sentiment 


AET.  66      TO  MADAME  WAGNIERE  145 

for  all  your  Vaudois  lake  shore.  I  remember 
perfectly  your  Tour  de  Peilz  neighbourhood,  and 
at  the  thought  of  all  the  beauty  and  benignity  that 
crowds  your  picture  I  envy  you  as  much  as  I 
applaud.  If  I  did  not  live  in  this  country  and  in 
this  possibility  of  contact  with  London,  for  which 
I  have  many  reasons,  I  think  I  too  would  fix  my 
self  in  Switzerland,  and  in  your  conveniently  cos 
mopolite  part  of  it,  where  you  are  in  the  very 
centre  of  Europe  and  of  a  whole  circle  of  easy  com 
munications  and  excursions.  I  was  immensely 
struck  with  the  way  the  Simplon  tunnel  makes  a 
deliciously  near  thing  of  Italy  (the  last  and  first 
time  I  came  through  it  a  couple  of  years  ago;)  and 
when  I  remember  how  when  I  left  Milan  well  after 
luncheon,  I  was  at  my  hotel  at  Lausanne  at  10.30 
or  so,  your  position  becomes  quite  ideal,  granting 
the  proposition  that  one  doesn't  (any  longer)  so 
much  want  to  live  in  that  unspeakable  country  as 
to  feel  whenever  one  will,  well  on  the  way  to  it. 
And  you  are  on  the  way  to  so  many  other  of  the 
interesting  countries,  the  roads  to  which  all  radiate 
from  you  as  the  spokes  from  the  hub  of  a  wheel — 
which  remarks,  however,  you  will  have  all  been 
furiously  making  to  yourselves;  "all"  I  say,  be 
cause  I  suppose  Marguerite  is  now  with  you,  and 
I  don't  suppose  that  even  she  wants  to  be  always 
on  the  way  to  Boston  only. 

I  hope  you  are  having  la-bas  a  less  odious  year 
than  we  poverini,  who  only  see  it  go  on  from  bad 
to  worse,  the  deluge  en  permanence,  with  mud  up 
to  our  necks  and  a  consequent  confinement  to  the 
house  that  is  like  an  interminable  stormy  sea 
voyage  under  closed  hatches.  I  have  now  spent 
some  ten  or  eleven  winters  mainly  in  the  country 
and  find  myself  reacting  violently  at  last  in  favour 
of  pavements  or  street  lamps  and  lighted  shop 
fronts — places  where  one  can  go  out  at  4  or  at  5  or 
at  6,  if  the  deluge  has  been  "on"  the  hour  before 


146       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1009 

and  has  mercifully  abated.  Here  at  5  or  6  the 
plunge  is  only  into  black  darkness  and  the  abysmal 
crotte  aforesaid.  I  don't  say  this  to  discourage 
you,  for  I  am  sure  you  have  shop-fronts  and  pave 
ments  and  tramcars  highly  convenient,  and  also 
without  detriment  to  the  charming-looking  house 
of  which  you  send  me  the  likeness.  It  is  evidently 
a  most  sympathetic  spot,  and  I  shall  positively 
try,  on  some  propitious  occasion,  to  knock  at  its 
door.  I  envy  you  the  drop  into  Italy  that  you 
will  have  by  this  time  made,  or  come  back  from, 
after  meeting  your  daughter.  I  send  her  my  kind 
est  remembrance  and  the  same  to  her  father. 

I  catch  the  distracted  post  (so  distracted  and 
distracting  at  this  British  Xmas-tide)  and  am,  dear 
Laura  Wagniere,  your  affectionate  old  friend, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Thomas  Sergeant  Perry. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

Dec.  22,  1909. 
My  dear  Thomas, 

As  usual  my  silence  has  become  so  dense 
and  coagulated  that  you  might  cut  monstrous  slabs 
and  slices  off  it  for  distribution  in  your  family — 
were  you  "maliciously"  disposed!  But  my  whole 
security — as  my  whole  decency  (so  far  as  claim  to 
decency  for  myself  goes) — is  that  we  are  neither 
of  us  malicious,  and  that  I  have  often  enough 
shown  you  before  that,  deep  as  I  may  seem  to 
plunge  into  the  obscure,  there  ever  comes  an  hour 
when,  panting  and  puffing  (as  even  now!)  my  head 
emerges  again,  to  say  nothing  of  my  heart.  I  have 
treasured  your  petit  mot  from  a  point  of  space  un 
identified,  but  despatched  from  a  Holland- America 
ship  and  bearing  a  French  and  a  Pas-de-Calais 
postage-stamp  (a  bit  bewilderingly) — treasured 


AET.  66        TO  THOMAS  S.  PERRY  147 

it  for  the  last  month  as  a  link  with  your  receding 
form:  the  recession  of  which  makes  me  miss  your 
presence  in  this  hemisphere  out  of  proportion  some 
how  to  the — to  any — frequency  with  which  fortune 
enables  me  to  enjoy  it.  But  I  still  keep  hold  of 
the  pledge  that  your  retention  (as  I  understand 
you)  of  your  Paris  apartment  constitutes  toward 
your  soon  coming  back — and  really  feel  that  with 
a  return  under  your  protection  and  management 
absolutely  guaranteed  me,  I  too  should  have  liked 
to  tempt  again  the  adventure  with  you;  should  have 
liked  again  to  taste  of  the  natal  air — and  perhaps 
even  in  a  wider  draught  than  you  will  go  in  for. 
However,  I  have  neither  your  youth,  your  sinews, 
nor  your  fortune — let  alone  your  other  domestic 
blessings  and  reinforcements — and  somehow  the 
memory  of  what  was  fierce  and  formidable  in  our 
colossal  country  the  last  time  I  was  there  prevails 
with  me  over  softer  emotions,  and  I  feel  I  shall 
never  alight  on  it  again  save  as  upborne  on  the 
wings  of  some  miracle  that  isn't  in  the  least  likely 
to  occur.  The  nearest  I  shall  come  to  it  will  be 
in  my  impatience  for  your  return  with  the  choice 
collection  of  notes  I  hope  you  will  have  taken  for 
me.  You  have  chosen  a  good  year  for  absence — 
I  mean  a  deplorable,  an  infamous  one,  in  "Europe," 
for  any  joy  or  convenience  of  air  or  weather.  The 
pleasant  land  of  France  lies  soaking  as  well  as 
this  more  confessed  and  notorious  sponge,  I  believe ; 
— and  I  have  now  for  months  found  life  no  better 
than  a  beastly  sea-voyage  of  storms  and  sub 
mersions  under  closed  hatches.  We  rot  with  damp 
ness,  confinement  and  despair — in  short  we  are 
reduced  to  the  abjectness,  as  you  see,  of  literally 
talking  weather.  You  will  see  our  Nephew  Bill, 
I  trust,  promptly,  in  your  rich  art-world  la-bas, 
and  I  beg  you  to  add  your  pressure  to  mine  on  the 
question  of  our  absolutely  soon  enjoying  him  over 
here.  I  am  under  a  semi-demi-pledge  to  go  to 


148       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1909 

Paris  for  a  fortnight  in  April — but  it  would  be  a 
more  positive  prospect,  I  think,  if  I  knew  I  were  to 
find  you  all  there.  Give  my  bestest  love  to  Lilla, 
please,  and  my  untutored  homages  to  the  Daugh 
ters  of  Music.  Try  to  see  Howells  chez  lui — so  as 
to  bring  me  every  detail.  Feel  thus  how  much  I 
count  on  you  and  receive  from  me  every  invoca 
tion  proper  to  this  annual  crisis.  May  the  genius 
of  our  common  country  have  you  in  its  most — 
or  least? — energetic  keeping.  Yours,  my  dear 
Thomas,  ever, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Owen  Wister. 

The  links  will  be  recognised  in  this  letter  with  H.  J.'s 
old  friend,  Mrs.  Fanny  Kemble.  Her  daughters  were  Mrs. 
Leigh,  wife  of  the  Dean  of  Hereford,  and  the  mother  of 
Mr.  Owen  Wister. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

Dec.  26th,  1909. 
Dearest  Owen! 

Your  so  benevolent  telegram  greatly  touches 
me,  and  I  send  you  off  this  slower-travelling  but 
all  faithful  and  affectionate  acknowledgment  within 
an  hour  or  two  of  receiving  it.  It  hasn't  told  me 
much — save  indeed  that  you  sometimes  think  of 
me  and  are  moved,  as  it  were,  toward  me;  and  that 
verily — though  I  am  incapable  of  supposing  the 
contrary — is  not  a  little.  What  I  miss  and  deplore 
is  some  definite  knowledge  of  how  you  are — deeply 
aware  as  I  am  that  it  adds  a  burden  and  a  terror 
to  ill-health  to  have  to  keep  reporting  to  one's 
friends  how  ill  one  is — or  isn't.  That's  the  last 
thing  I  dream  of  from  you — and  I  possess  my  soul, 
and  my  desire  for  you,  in  patience — or  I  try  to. 
I  don't  see  any  one,  however,  whom  I  can  appeal 
to  for  light  about  you — for  I  missed,  most  lamen- 


AET.  66  TO  OWEN  WISTER  149 

tably,  Florence  La  Farge  during  her  heart-break 
ing  little  mockery  of  sixteen  days  in  England  a 
few  weeks  ago;  she  having  written  me  in  advance 
that  she  would  come  and  see  me,  and  then,  within 
a  few  hours  after  her  arrival,  engaged  herself  so 
deep  that  she  apparently  couldn't  manage  it — nor 
I  manage  to  get  to  London  during  the  snatch  of 
time  she  was  there  ( for  she  was  mainly  in  the  coun 
try  only.)  I  had  had  an  idea  that  she  would 
authentically  know  about  you,  and  had  I  seen  her 
I  would  have  pumped  her  dry.  I  was  at  the  Dean 
ery  for  three  or  four  days  in  September  (quite  in 
credibly — for  the  Hereford  Festival,)  and  they 
were  most  kind,  the  Dean  dear  and  delightful  be 
yond  even  his  ancient  dearness  etc.;  but  we  only 
could  fondly  speculate  and  vainly  theorize  and 
yearn  over  you — and  that  didn't  see  us  much  for- 
rarder.  That  I  hope  you  are  safe  and  sound  again, 
and  firm  on  your  feet,  and  planning  and  tending 
somehow  hitherward — that  I  hope  this  with  fierce 
intensity  I  need  scarcely  assure  you,  need  I?  But 
the  years  melt  away,  and  the  changes  multiply,  and 
the  facilities  (some  of  them)  diminish;  the  sands 
in  the  hour-glass  run,  in  short,  and  Sister  Anne 
comes  down  from  her  tower  and  says  she  sees 
nothing  of  you.  But  here  I  am  where  you  last  left 
me — and  writing  even  now,  late  at  night,  in  the 
little  old  oaken  parlour  where  we  had  such  mem 
orable  and  admirable  discourse.  The  sofa  on  which 
you  stretched  yourself  is  there  behind  me — and  it 
holds  out  appealing  little  padded  arms  to  you.  I 
don't  seem  to  recognise  any  particular  nearness  for 
my  being  able  to  revisit  your  prodigious  scene. 
The  more  the  chill  of  age  settles  upon  me  the  more 
formidable  it  seems.  And  I  haven't  myself  had 
a  very  famous  year  here — for  a  few  months  in  fact 
rather  a  bad  and  perturbing  one;  but  which  has 
considerably  cleared  and  redeemed  itself  now.  We 
are  just  emerging  from  the  rather  deadly  oppres- 


150      LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1909 

sion  of  the  English  Xmastide — which  I  have  spent 
at  home  for  the  first  time  for  four  years — a  lone 
and  lorn  and  stranded  friend  or  two  being  with  me ; 
with  a  long  breath  of  relief  that  the  worst  is  over. 
Terrific  postal  matter  has  accumulated,  however — 
and  the  arrears  of  my  correspondence  make  me 
quail  and  almost  collapse.  You  see  in  this,  already, 
the  rather  weary  hand  and  head — but  please  feel 
and  find  in  it  too  (with  my  true  blessing  on  your 
wife  and  weans)  all  the  old  affection  of  your 
devoted 

HENKY  JAMES. 


VII 

RYE  AND  CHELSEA 

(1910-1914) 

For  the  next  year — that  is  for  the  whole  of  1910 
— Henry  James  was  under  the  shadow  of  an  ill 
ness,  partly  physical  but  mainly  nervous,  which 
deprived  him  of  all  power  to  work  and  caused  him 
immeasurable  suffering  of  mind.  In  spite  of  a 
constitution  that  in  many  ways  was  notably  strong, 
the  question  of  his  health  was  always  a  matter  of 
some  concern  to  him,  and  he  was  by  nature  inclined 
to  anticipate  trouble ;  so  that  his  temperament  was 
not  one  that  would  easily  react  against  a  malady 
of  which  the  chief  burden  was  mental  depression 
of  the  darkest  kind.  It  would  be  impossible  to 
exaggerate  the  distress  that  afflicted  him  for  many 
months;  but  his  determination  to  surmount  it  was 
unshaken  and  his  recovery  was  largely  a  triumph 
of  will.  Fortunately  he  had  the  most  sympathetic 
help  at  hand,  over  and  above  devoted  medical  care. 
Professor  and  Mrs.  William  James  had  planned 
to  spend  the  summer  in  Europe  again,  and  when 
they  heard  of  his  condition  they  hastened  out  to  be 
with  him  as  soon  as  possible.  The  company  of  his 
beloved  brother  and  sister-in-law  was  the  best  in  the 
world  for  him — indeed  he  could  scarcely  face  any 
other;  only  with  their  support  he  felt  able  to  cover 

151 


152     LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES    1910-14 

the  difficult  stages  of  his  progress.  It  was  William 
James's  health,  once  more,  that  had  made  Europe 
necessary  for  him;  he  was  in  fact  much  more 
gravely  ill  than  his  brother,  but  it  was  not  until 
later  in  the  summer  that  his  state  began  to  cause 
alarm.  By  that  time  Henry,  after  paying  a  visit 
with  his  sister-in-law  to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Charles 
Hunter  at  Epping,  had  joined  him  at  Nauheim, 
in  Germany,  where  a  very  anxious  situation  had  to 
be  met.  While  William  James  Was  losing  ground, 
Henry  was  still  suffering  greatly,  and  the  prospect 
of  being  separated  from  his  family  by  their  return 
to  America  was  unendurable  to  him.  It  was  de 
cided  that  he  should  go  with  them,  and  they  sailed 
before  the  end  of  August.  They  had  just  received 
the  news  of  the  death  in  America  of  their  youngest 
brother,  Robertson  James,  whose  epitaph,  memo 
rial  of  an  "agitated  and  agitating  life,"  was  after 
wards  written  with  grave  tenderness  in  the  "Notes 
of  a  Son  and  Brother." 

William  James  sank  very  rapidly  as  they  made 
the  voyage,  and  the  end  came  when  they  reached 
his  home  in  the  New  Hampshire  mountains.  There 
is  no  need  to  say  how  deeply  Henry  mourned  the 
loss  of  the  nearest  and  dearest  friend*  of  his  whole 
life;  nothing  can  be  added  to  the  letters  that  will 
presently  be  read.  All  the  more  he  clung  to  his 
brother's  family,  the  centre  of  his  profoundest  af 
fection.  He  remained  with  them  during  the  win 
ter  at  Cambridge,  where  very  gradually  he  began 
to  emerge  from  the  darkness  of  depression  and  to 
feel  capable  of  work  again.  He  took  up  with  in 
terest  a  suggestion,  made  to  him  by  Mrs.  William 
James,  that  he  should  write  some  account  of  his 
parents  and  his  early  life ;  and  as  this  idea  developed 
in  his  mind  it  fed  the  desire  to  return  home  and 
devote  himself  to  a  record  of  old  memories.  He 
lingered  on  in  America,  however,  for  the  summer 
of  1911,  now  so  much  restored  that  he  could  enjoy 


1910-14  RYE  AND  CHELSEA  153 

visits  to  several  friends.  He  welcomed,  further 
more,  two  signs  of  appreciation  that  reached  him 
almost  at  the  same  time — the  offer  of  honorary 
degrees  at  Harvard  and  at  Oxford.  The  Harvard 
degree  was  conferred  before  he  left  America,  the 
Oxford  doctorate  of  letters  in  the  following  year, 
when  he  received  it  in  the  company  of  the  Poet 
Laureate. 

As  soon  as  he  was  established  at  Lamb  House 
again  (September  1911)  he  set  to  work  upon  A  / 
Small  Boy  and  Others,  and  for  a  long  time  to 
come  he  was  principally  occupied  with  this  book 
and  the  sequel  to  it.  He  went  abroad  no  more  and 
was  never  long  away  from  Rye  or  London ;  but  his  x< 
power  of  regular  work  was  not  what  it  had  been 
before  his  illness,  and  excepting  a  few  of  the  papers 
in  Notes  on  Novelists  the  two  volumes  of  reminis 
cences  were  all  that  he  wrote  before  the  end  of 
1913.  His  health  was  still  an  anxiety,  and  his  let 
ters  show  that  he  began  to  regard  himself  as  defi 
nitely  committed  to  the  life  of  an  invalid.  Yet  it 
would  be  easy,  perhaps,  to  gain  a  wrong  impression 
from  them  of  his  state  during  these  years.  His 
physical  troubles  were  certainly  sometimes  acute, 
but  he  kept  his  remarkable  capacity  for  throwing 
them  off,  and  in  converse  with  his  friends  his  vigour 
of  life  seemed  to  have  suffered  little.  He  had  al 
ways  loved  slow  and  lengthy  walks  with  a  single 
companion,  and  possibly  the  most  noticeable  change 
was  only  that  these  became  slower  than  ever,  with 
more  numerous  pauses  at  points  of  interest  or  for 
the  development  of  some  picturesque  turn  of  the 
talk.  The  grassy  stretches  between  Rye  and  its 
sea-shore  were  exactly  suited  to  long  afternoons 
of  this  kind,  and  with  a  friend,  better  still  a  nephew 
or  niece,  to  walk  with  him,  such  was  the  occupation 
he  preferred  to  any  other.  For  the  winter  and 
spring  he  continued  to  return  to  London,  where  ' 
he  still  had  his  club-lodging  in  Pall  Mall.  After 


154      LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES 

a  sharp  and  very  painful  illness  at  Rye  in  the 
autumn  of  1912  he  moved  into  a  more  convenient 
dwelling — a  small  flat  in  Cheyne  Walk,  overhang 
ing  the  Chelsea  river-side.  Here  the  long  level  of 
the  embankment  gave  him  opportunities  of  exer 
cise  as  agreeable  in  their  way  as  those  at  Rye,  and 
he  found  himself  liking  to  stay  on  in  this  "simplified 
London"  until  the  height  of  the  summer. 

April  15,  1913,  was  his  seventieth  birthday,  and 
a  large  company,  nearly  three  hundred  in  number, 
of  his  English  circle  seized  the  occasion  to  make  him 
a  united  offering  of  friendship.  They  asked  him 
to  allow  his  portrait  to  be  painted  by  one  of  them 
selves,  Mr.  John  S.  Sargent.  Henry  James  was 
touched  and  pleased,  and  for  the  next  year  the 
fortunes  of  Mr.  Sargent's  work  are  fully  recorded 
in  the  correspondence — from  its  happy  completion 
and  the  private  view  of  it  in  the  artist's  studio,  to 
the  violence  it  suffered  at  the  hands  of  a  political 
agitatress,  while  it  hung  in  the  Royal  Academy 
Exhibition  of  1914,  and  its  successful  restoration 
from  its  injuries.  The  picture  now  belongs  to  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery.  On  Mr.  Sargent's 
commission  a  bust  of  Henry  James  was  at  the 
same  time  modelled  by  Mr.  Derwent  Wood. 

Early  in  1914,  after  an  interval  of  all  but  ten 
years,  Henry  James  began  what  he  had  often  said 
he  should  never  begin  again — a  long  novel.  It  was 
the  novel,  at  last,  of  American  life,  long  ago  pro 
jected  and  abandoned,  and  now  revived  as  The 
Ivory  Tower.  Slowly  and  with  many  interruptions 
he  proceeded  with  it,  and  he  was  well  in  the  midst 
of  it  when  he  left  Chelsea  for  Lamb  House  in  July 
1914.  His  health  was  now  on  a  better  level  than 
for  some  time  past,  and  he  counted  on  a  peaceful 
and  fruitful  autumn  of  work  at  Rye. 


M 


> 


To  T.  Bailey  Saunders. 

L.  H. 

Jan.  27th  [1910]. 
My  dear  Bailey, 

I  am  still  in  bed,  attended  by  doctor  and 
nurse,  but  doing  very  well  and  mending  now  very 
steadily  and  smoothly — so  that  I  hope  to  be  practi 
cally  up  early  next  week.  Also  I  am  touched  by, 
and  appreciative  of,  your  solicitude.  (You  see  I 
still  cling  to  syntax  or  style,  or  whatever  it  is.) 
But  I  have  had  an  infernal  time  really — I  may 
now  confide  to  you — pretty  well  all  the  while  since 

1  left  you  that  sad  and  sinister  morning  to  come 
back  from  the  station.     A  digestive  crisis  making 
food  loathsome  and  nutrition  impossible — and  sick 
inanition  and  weakness  and  depression  permanent. 
However,  bed,  the  good  Skinner,  M.D.,  the  gentle 
nurse,  with  very  small  feedings  administered  every 

2  hours,  have  got  the  better  of  the  cursed  state, 
and  I  am  now  hungry  and  redeemed  and  convales 
cent.     The  Election  fight  has  revealed  to  me  how 
ardent  a  Liberal  lurks  in  the  cold  and  clammy 
exterior  of  your 

H.J. 


156       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1010 


To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

The  allusions  in  the  following  are  to  articles  by  Mr.  W. 
Morton  Fullerton  (in  the  Times)  on  the  disastrous  floods 
in  Paris,  and  to  Alfred  de  Musset's  "Lettres  d'amour  a 
Aimee  d'Alton." 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

February  8th,  1910. 
Dearest  Edith, 

I  am  in  receipt  of  endless  bounties  from  you 
and  dazzling  revelations  about  you:  item:  1st:  the 
grapes  of  Paradise  that  arrived  yesterday  in  a 
bloom  of  purple  and  a  burst  of  sweetness  that  made 
me — while  they  cast  their  Tyrian  glamour  about 
— ask  more  ruefully  than  ever  what  porridge  poor 
new-convalescent  John  Keats  mustn't  have  had: 
2d :  your  exquisite  appeal  and  approach  to  the  good 
— the  really  admirable  Skinner,  who  has  now  wrung 
tears  of  emotion  from  my  eyes  by  bringing  them 
to  my  knowledge:  3d:  your  gentle  "holograph" 
letter,  just  to  hand — which  treats  my  stupid  reflec 
tions  on  your  own  patience  with  such  heavenly 
gentleness.  When  one  is  still  sickish  and  shaky 
(though  that,  thank  goodness,  is  steadily  ebbing) 
one  tumbles  wrong — even  when  one  has  wanted  to 
make  the  most  delicate  geste  in  life.  But  the  great 
thing  is  that  we  always  tumble  together — more  and 
more  never  apart ;  and  that  for  that  happy  exercise 
and  sweet  coincidence  of  agility  we  may  trust  our 
selves  and  each  other  to  the  end  of  time.  So  I 
gratefully  grovel  for  everything — and  for  your 
beautiful  and  generous  inquiry  of  Skinner  .  .  . 
more  than  even  anything  else.  The  purple  clusters 
are,  none  the  less,  of  a  prime  magnificence  and  of 
an  inexpressible  relevance  to  my  state.  This  is 
steadily  bettering — thanks  above  all  to  three  suc 
cessive  morning  motor-rides  that  Skinner  has  taken 
me,  of  an  hour  and  a  half  each  (to-day  in  fact 


AET.  66  TO  MRS.  WHARTON  157 

nearly  two  hours),  while  he  goes  his  rounds  in  a 
fairly  far  circuit  over  the  country-side.  I  sit  at 
cottage  and  farmhouse  doors  while  he  warns  and 
comforts  and  commands  within,  and,  these  days 
having  been  mild  and  grey  and  convenient,  the 
effect  has  been  of  the  last  benignity.  I  am  thus 
exceedingly  sustained.  And  also  by  the  knowledge 
that  you  are  not  being  wrenched  from  your  hard- 
bought  foyer  and  your  neighbourhood  to  your  best 
of  brothers.  Cramponnez-vous-y.  I  don't  ask  you 
about  poor  great  Paris — I  make  out  as  I  can  by 
Morton's  playing  flashlight.  And  I  read  Walkley 
on  Chantecler — which  sounds  rather  like  a  glitter 
ing  void.  I  have  now  dealt  with  Alfred  and  Aimee 
— unprofitable  pair.  What  a  strange  and  com 
promising  French  document — in  this  sense  that  it 
affects  one  as  giving  so  many  people  and  things 
away,  by  the  simple  fact  of  springing  so  charac 
teristically  and  almost  squalidly  out  of  them.  The 
letter  in  which  Alf.  arranges  for  her  to  come  into 
his  dirty  bedroom  at  8  a.m.,  while  his  mother  and 
brother  and  others  unknowingly  grouillent  on  the 
other  side  of  the  cloison  that  shall  make  their  nid 
d'amour,  and  la  fafon  dont  elle  y  vole  react  back 
even  upon  dear  old  George  rather  fatally — apropos 
of  dirty  bedrooms,  thin  cloisons  and  the  usual  state 
of  things,  one  surmises,  at  that  hour.  What  an 
Aimee  and  what  a  Paul  and  what  a  Mme  Jaubert 
and  what  an  everything! 

Ever  your 

H.  J. 


158     LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES         1910 


To  Miss  Jessie  Allen. 

The  plan  here  projected  of  looking  for  a  house  in  Eaton 
Terrace,  where  Miss  Allen  lived,  was  not»carried  further. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
February  20th,  1910. 

My    dear    eternally    martyred    and    murdered 

Goody, 

I  am  horribly  ashamed  to  have  my  poor 
hand  forced  (you  see  what  it  is  and  what  it's  re 
duced  to)  into  piling  up  on  your  poor  burdened 
consciousness  the  added  load  of  my  base  woes  (as 
if  you  weren't  lying  stretched  flat  beneath  the  pres 
sure  of  your  own  and  those  of  some  special  dozen 
or  two  of  your  most  favourite  and  fatal  vampires. ) 
I  proposed  you  should  know  nothing  of  mine  till 
they  were  all  over — if  they  ever  should  be  (which 
they  are  not  quite  yet:)  and  that  if  one  had  to 
speak  of  them  to  you  at  all,  it  might  thus  be  in  the 
most  pluperfect  of  all  past  tenses  and  twiddling 
one's  fingers  on  the  tip  of  one's  nose,  quite  vulgarly, 
as  to  intimate  that  you  were  a  day  after  the  fair. 
.  .  .  But  why  do  I  unfold  this  gruesome  tale  when 
just  what  I  most  want  is  not  to  wring  your  insane 
ly  generous  heart  or  work  upon  your  perversely 
exquisite  sensibility?  I  am  pulling  through,  and 
though  I've  been  so  often  somewhat  better  only  to 
find  myself  topple  back  into  black  despair — with 
bad,  vilely  bad,  days  after  good  ones,  and  not  a 
very  famous  one  to-day — I  do  feel  that  I  have 
definitely  turned  the  corner  and  got  the  fiend  down, 
even  though  he  still  kicks  as  viciously  as  he  can  yet 
manage.  I  am  "up"  and  dressed,  and  in  short  I 
eat — after  a  fashion,  and  have  regained  consider 
able  weight  (oh  I  had  become  the  loveliest  sylph,) 
and  even,  I  am  told,  a  certain  charm  of  appearance. 
My  good  nephew  Harry  James,  priceless  youth, 


AET.  66       TO  MISS  JESSIE  ALLEN  159 

my  elder  brother's  eldest  son,  sailed  from  N.Y. 
yesterday  to  come  out  and  see  me — and  that  alone 
lifts  up  my  heart — for  I  have  felt  a  very  lonesome 
and  stranded  old  idiot.  My  conditions  (of  circum 
stance,  house  and  care,  &c)  have  on  the  other  hand 
been  excellent — my  servants  angels  of  affection  and 
devotion.  (I  have  indeed  been  all  in  Doctor's  and 
Nurse's  hands.)  So  don't  take  it  hard  now;  take 
it  utterly  easy  and  allow  your  charity  to  stray  a 
little  by  way  of  a  change  into  your  own  personal 
premises.  Take  a  look  in  there  and  let  it  even  make 
you  linger.  To  hear  you  are  doing  that  will  do  me 
more  good  than  anything  else.  .  .  . 

I  yearn  unutterably  to  get  on  far  enough  to 
begin  to  plan  to  come  up  to  town  for  a  while.  I 
have  of  late  reacted  intensely  against  this  exile 
from  some  of  the  resources  of  civilization  in  winter 
— and  deliriously  dream  of  some  future  footing  in 
London  again  (other  than  my  club)  for  the  space 
of  time  between  Xmas  or  so  and  June.  What  is 
the  rent  of  a  house — unfurnished  of  course  (a  little 
good  inside  one) — in  your  Terrace? — and  are  there 
any  with  2  or  3  servants'  bedrooms? 

Don't  answer  this  absurdity  now — but  wait  till 
we  go  and  look  at  2  or  3  together!  Such  is  the 
recuperative  yearning  of  your  enfeebled  but  not 
beaten — you  can  see  by  this  scrawl — old 

H.  J. 


To  Mrs.  Bigelow. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

April  19th,  1910. 
My  dear  Edith, 

I  have  been  much  touched  by  your  solicitude, 
but  till  now  absolutely  too  "bad"  to  write — to  do 
anything  but  helplessly,  yearningly  languish  and 
suffer  and  surrender.  I  have  had  a  perfect  Hell 


160     LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES     1010-14 

of  a  Time — since  just  after  Xmas — nearly  15  long 
weeks  of  dismal,  dreary,  interminable  illness  (with 
occasional  slight  pickings-up  followed  by  black  re 
lapses.)  But  the  tide,  thank  the  Powers,  has  at 
last  definitely  turned  and  I  am  on  the  way  to  get 
ting  not  only  better,  but,  as  I  believe,  creep ily  and 
abjectly  well.  I  sent  my  Nurse  (my  second)  fly 
ing  the  other  day,  after  ten  deadly  weeks  of  her, 
and  her  predecessor's,  aggressive  presence  and 
policy,  and  the  mere  relief  from  that  overdone 
discipline  has  done  wonders  for  me.  I  must  have 
patience,  much,  yet — but  my  face  is  toward  the 
light,  which  shows,  beautifully,  that  I  look  ten  years 
older,  with  my  bonny  tresses  ten  degrees  whiter 
(like  Marie  Antoinette's  in  the  Conciergerie. ) 
However  if  I've  lost  all  my  beauty  and  (by  my 
expenses)  most  of  my  money,  I  rejoice  I've  kept 
my  friends,  and  I  shall  come  and  show  you  that 
appreciation  yet.  I  am  so  delighted  that  you  and 
the  Daughterling  had  your  go  at  Italy — even 
though  I  was  feeling  so  pre-eminently  un-Italian. 
The  worst  of  that  Paradise  is  indeed  that  one  re 
turns  but  to  Purgatories  at  the  best.  Have  a  little 
patience  yet  with  your  still  struggling  but  all 
clinging 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  W.  E.  Norris. 

Hill  Hall, 
Theydon  Bois, 

Epping. 

May  22nd,  1910. 
My  dear  Norris, 

Forgive  a  very  brief  letter  and  a  very  sad 
one,  in  which  I  must  explain  long  and  complicated 
things  in  a  very  few  words.  I  have  had  a  dismal — 
the  most  dismal  and  interminable  illness ;  going  on 


AET.  67  TO   W.    E.    NORRIS  161 

these  five  months  nearly,  since  Christmas — and 
of  which  the  end  is  not  yet;  and  of  which  all  this 
later  stage  has  been  (these  ten  or  twelve  weeks) 
a  development  of  nervous  conditions  (agitation, 
trepidation,  black  melancholia  and  weakness)  of  a 
— the  most — formidable  and  distressing  kind.  My 
brother  and  sister-in-law  most  blessedly  came  on 
to  me  from  America  several  weeks  ago;  without  V 
them  I  had — should  have — quite  gone  under;  and 
a  week  ago,  under  extreme  medical  urgency  as  to 
change  of  air,  scene,  food,  everything,  I  came  here 
with  my  sister-in-law — to  some  most  kind  friends 
and  a  beautiful  place — as  a  very  arduous  experi 
ment.  But  I'm  too  ill  to  be  here  really,  and  shall 
crawl  home  as  soon  as  possible.  I'm  afraid  I  can't 
see  you  in  London — I  can  plan  nor  do  nothing; 
and  can  only  ask  you,  in  my  weakness,  depression 
and  helplessness,  to  pardon  this  doleful  story  from 
your  affectionate  and  afflicted  old 

HENBY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

Bittongs  Hotel  Hohenzollern, 
Bad  Nauheim. 

June  10th,  1910. 
Dearest  Edith, 

Your  kindest  note  met  me  here  on  my  ar-\ 
rival  with  my  sister  last  evening.  We  are  infinitely 
touched  by  the  generous  expression  of  it,  but  there 
had  been,  and  could  be,  no  question  for  us  of  Paris 
—formidable  at  best  (that  is  in  general)  as  a  place 
of  rapid  transit.  I  had,  to  my  sorrow,  a  baddish 
drop  on  coming  back  from  high  Epping  Forest 
(that  is  "Theydon  Mount")  to  poor  little  flat  and 
stale  and  illness-haunted  Rye — and  I  felt,  my  Dr. 
strongly  urging,  safety  to  be  in  a  prompt  escape 


162       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1910 

by  the  straightest  way  (Calais,  Brussels,  Cologne, 
and  Frankfort,)  to  this  place  of  thick  woods, 
groves,  springs  and  general  Kurort  soothingness, 
where  my  brother  had  been  for  a  fortnight  waiting 
us  alone.  Here  I  am  then  and  having  made  the 
journey,  in  great  heat,  far  better  than  I  feared. 
Slowly  but  definitely  I  am  emerging — yet  with 
nervous  possibilities  still  too  latent,  too  in  ambush, 
for  me  to  do  anything  but  cling  for  as  much  longer 
as  possible  to  my  Brother  and  sister.  I  am  wholly 
unfit  to  be  alone — in  spite  of  amelioration.  That 
(being  alone)  I  can't  even  as  yet  think  of — and 
yet  feel  that  I  must  for  many  months  to  come  have 
none  of  the  complications  of  society.  In  fine,  to 
break  to  you  the  monstrous  truth,  I  have  taken  my 
passage  with  them  to  America  by  the  Canadian 
Pacific  Steamer  line  ("short  sea")  on  August 
12th — to  spend  the  winter  in  America.  I  must 
break  with  everything — of  the  last  couple  of  years 
in  England — and  am  trying  if  possible  to  let  Lamb 
House  for  the  winter — also  am  giving  up  my  Lon 
don  perch.  When  I  come  back  I  must  have  a 
better.  There  are  the  grim  facts — but  now  that 
I  have  accepted  them  I  see  hope  and  reason  in  them. 
I  feel  that  the  completeness  of  the  change  la-bas 
will  help  me  more  than  anything  else  can — and  the 
amount  of  corners  I  have  already  turned  (though 
my  nervous  spectre  still  again  and  again  scares  me) 
is  a  kind  of  earnest  of  the  rest  of  the  process.  I 
cling  to  my  companions  even  as  a  frightened  cry 
baby  to  his  nurse  and  protector — but  of  all  that 
it  is  depressing,  almost  degrading  to  speak.  This 
place  is  insipid,  yet  soothing — very  bosky  and 
sedative  and  admirably  arranged,  a  Tallemande — 
but  with  excessive  and  depressing  heat  just  now, 
and  a  toneless  air  at  the  best.  The  admirable  om- 
brages  and  walks  and  pacifying  pitch  of  life  make 
up,  however,  for  much.  We  shall  be  here  for  three 
weeks  longer  (I  seem  to  entrevoir)  and  then  try 


.  67 


TO  MRS.  WHARTON  163 


for  something  Swiss  and  tonic.     We  must  be  in 
England  by  Aug.  1st. 

And  now  I  simply  fear  to  challenge  you  on  your 
own  complications.  I  can  bear  tragedies  so  little. 
Tout  se  rattache  so  a  the  thing  —  the  central  depres 
sion.  And  yet  I  want  so  to  know  —  and  I  think  of 
you  with  infinite  tenderness,  participation  —  and 
such  a  large  and  helpless  devotion.  Well,  we  must 
hold  on  tight  and  we  shall  come  out  again  face  to 
face  —  wiser  than  ever  before  (if  that's  any  advan 
tage!)  This  address,  I  foresee,  will  find  me  for  the 
next  15  days  —  and  we  might  be  worse  abrites.  Ger 
many  has  become  comfortable.  Note  that  much  as 
I  yearn  to  you,  I  don't  nag  you  with  categorical 
(even  though  in  Germany)  questions.  .  .  .  Ever 
your  unspeakable,  dearest  Edith, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
July  29th,  1910. 

Dearest  Edith, 

It's  intense  joy  to  hear  from  you,  and  when 
I  think  that  the  last  news  I  gave  you  of  myself 
was  at  Nauheim  (it  seems  to  me),  with  the  night 
mare  of  Switzerland  that  followed— -"Munich  and 
the  Tyrol  etc,"  which  I  believe  I  then  hinted  at  to 
you,  proved  the  vainest  crazy  dream  of  but  a  mo- 
ment — I  feel  what  the  strain  and  stress  of  the 
sequel  that  awaited  me  really  became.  That  dire 
ordeal  (attempted  Nach-Kurs  for  my  poor  brother 
at  low  Swiss  altitudes,  Constance,  Zurich,  Lucerne, 
Geneva,  &c.)  terminated  however  a  fortnight  ago — 
or  more — and  after  a  bad  week  in  London  we  are 
here  waiting  to  sail  on  Aug.  12th.  I  am  definitely 
much  better,  and  on  the  road  to  be  well;  a  great 
gain  has  come  to  me,  in  spite  of  everything,  during 


164       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1910 

the  last  ten  days  in  particular.  I  say  in  spite  of 
everything,  for  my  dear  brother's  condition,  already 
so  bad  on  leaving  the  treacherous  and  disastrous 
Nauheim,  has  gone  steadily  on  to  worse — he  is 
painfully  ill,  weak  and  down,  and  the  anxiety  of 
it,  with  our  voyage  in  view,  is  a  great  tension  to  me 
in  my  still  quite  struggling  upward  state.  But  I 
stand  and  hold  my  ground  none  the  less,  and  we 
have  really  brought  him  on  since  we  left  London. 
But  the  dismalness  of  it  all — and  of  the  sudden 
death,  a  fortnight  ago,  of  our  younger  brother  in 
the  U.S.  by  heart-failure  in  his  sleep — a  painless, 
peaceful,  enviable  end  to  a  stormy  and  unhappy 
career — makes  our  common  situation,  all  these 
months  back  and  now,  fairly  tragic  and  miserable. 
However,  I  am  convinced  that  his  getting  home, 
if  it  can  be  securely  done,  will  do  much  for  Will 
iam — and  I  am  myself  now  on  a  much  "higher 
plane"  than  I  expected  a  very  few  weeks  since,  to 
be.  I  kind  of  want,,  uncannily,  to  go  to  America  too 
— apart  from  several  absolutely  imperative  reasons 
for  it.  I  rejoice  unspeakably  in  the  vision  of  see 
ing  you  .  .  .  here — or  even  in  London  or  at 
Windsor — one  of  these  very  next  days.  .  .  . 
Ever  your  all-affectionate,  dear  Edith, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Bruce  Porter. 

The  "betises"  were  certain  Baconian  clues  to  the 
authorship  of  Shakespeare's  plays,  which  Mr.  Bruce 
Porter  had  come  from  America  to  investigate. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

[August  1910.] 
My  dear — very! — Bruce, 

I  rejoice  to  hear  from  you  even  though  it 
entails  the  irritation    (I  brutally  showed  you,  in 


AET.  or  TO  BRUCE  PORTER  165 

town,  my  accessibility  to  that)  of  your  misguided 
search  for  a  sensation.  You  renew  my  harmless 
rage — for  I  hate  to  see  you  associated  (with  my 
firm  affection  for  you)  with  the  most  provincial 
betises,  and  to  have  come  so  far  to  do  it — to  be  it 
(given  over  to  a,  to  the  Betise!)  in  a  fine  finished 
old  England  with  which  one  can  have  so  much  bet 
ter  relations,  and  so  many  of  them — it  would  make 
me  blush,  or  bleed,  for  you,  could  anything  you  do 
cause  me  a  really  deep  discomfort.  But  nothing 
can — I  too  tenderly  look  the  other  way.  So  there 
we  are.  Besides  you  have  had  your  measles — and, 
though  you  might  have  been  better  employed,  go 
in  peace — be  measly  no  more.  At  any  rate  I 
grossly  want  you  to  know  that  I  am  really  ever 
so  much  better  than  when  we  were  together  in  Lon 
don.  I  go  on  quite  as  well  as  I  could  decently 
hope.  It's  an  ineffable  blessing.  It's  horrible 
somehow  that  those  brief  moments  shall  have  been 
all  our  meeting  here,  and  that  a  desert  wider  than 
the  sea  shall  separate  us  over  there;  but  this  is  a 
part  of  that  perversity  in  life  which  long  ago  gave 
me  the  ultimate  ache,  and  I  cherish  the  memory  of 
our  scant  London  luck.  My  brother,  too,  has  taken 
a  much  better  turn — and  we  sail  on  the  12th  defi 
nitely.  So  rejoice  with  me  and  believe  me,  my  dear 
Bruce,  all  affectionately  yours, 

HENKY  JAMES. 


To  Miss  Grace  Norton. 

Chocorua,  New  Hampshire. 

August  26,  1910. 
Dearest  Grace, 

I  am  deeply  touched  by  your  tender  note 
— and  all  the  more  that  we  have  need  of  tender 
ness,  in  a  special  degree,  here  now.  We  arrived, 


166       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1910 

William  and  Alice  and  I,  in  this  strange,  sad,  rude 
spot,  a  week  ago  to-night — after  a  most  trying 
journey  from  Quebec  (though  after  a  most  beauti 
ful,  quick,  in  itself  auspicious  voyage  too,)  but 
with  William  critically,  mortally  ill  and  with  our 
anxiety  and  tension  now  (he  has  rapidly  got  so 
much  worse)  a  real  anguish.  .  .  .  Alice  is  terribly 
exhausted  and  spent — but  the  rest  she  will  be  able 
to  take  must  presently  increase,  and  Harry,  who, 
after  leaving  us  at  Quebec,  started  with  a  friend 
on  a  much-needed  holiday  in  the  New  Brunswick 
woods  (for  shooting  and  fishing),  was  wired  to 
yesterday  to  come  back  to  us  at  once.  So  I  give 
you,  dear  Grace,  our  dismal  chronicle  of  suspense 
and  pain.  My  own  fears  are  the  blackest,  and  at 
the  prospect  of  losing  my  wonderful  beloved 
brother  out  of  the  world  in  which,  from  as  far  back 
as  in  dimmest  childhood,  I  have  so  yearningly  al 
ways  counted  on  him,  I  feel  nothing  but  the  abject 
weakness  of  grief  and  even  terror;  but  I  forgive 
myself  "weakness" — my  emergence  from  the  long 
and  grim  ordeal  of  my  own  peculiarly  dismal  and 
trying  illness  isn't  yet  absolutely  complete  enough 
to  make  me  wholly  firm  on  my  feet.  But  my  slowly 
recuperative  process  goes  on  despite  all  shakes  and 
shocks,  while  dear  William's,  in  the  full  climax 
of  his  intrinsic  powers  and  intellectual  ambitions, 
meets  this  tragic,  cruel  arrest.  However,  dear 
Grace,  I  won't  further  wail  to  you  in  my  nervous 
soreness  and  sorrow — still,  in  spite  of  so  much  re 
vival,  more  or  less  under  the  shadow  as  I  am  of  the 
miserable,  damnable  year  that  began  for  me  last 
Christmas-time  and  for  which  I  had  been  spoiling 
for  two  years  before.  I  will  only  wait  to  see  you — 
with  all  the  tenderness  of  our  long,  unbroken  friend 
ship  and  all  the  host  of  our  common  initiations. 
I  have  come  for  a  long  stay — though  when  we  shall 
be  able  to  plan  for  a  resumption  of  life  in  Irving 
Street  is  of  course  insoluble  as  yet.  Then,  at  all 


AET.  67     TO  MISS  GRACE  NORTON  167 

events,  with  what  eagerness  your  threshold  will  be 
crossed  by  your  f aithfullest  old 

HENRY  JAMES. 

P.S.  It's  to-day  blessedly  cooler  here — and  I 
hope  you  also  have  the  reprieve! 

P.S.  I  open  my  letter  of  three  hours  since  to 
add  that  William  passed  unconsciously  away  an 
hour  ago — without  apparent  pain  or  struggle. 
Think  of  us,  dear  Grace,  think  of  us! 


To  Thomas  Sergeant  Perry. 

Chocorua,  N.H. 

Sept.  2nd,  1910. 
My  dear  old  Thomas, 

I  sit  heavily  stricken  and  in  darkness — for 
from  far  back  in  dimmest  childhood  he  had  been 
my  ideal  Elder  Brother,  and  I  still,  through  all  the 
years,  saw  in  him,  even  as  a  small  timorous  boy 
yet,  my  protector,  my  backer,  my  authority  and  my 
pride.  His  extinction  changes  the  face  of  life  for 
me — besides  the  mere  missing  of  his  inexhaustible 
company  and  personality,  originality,  the  whole 
unspeakably  vivid  and  beautiful  presence  of  him. 
And  his  noble  intellectual  vitality  was  still  but  at 
its  climax — he  had  two  or  three  ardent  purposes 
and  plans.  He  had  cast  them  away,  however,  at 
the  end — I  mean  that,  dreadfully  suffering,  he 
wanted  only  to  die.  Alice  and  I  had  a  bitter  pil 
grimage  with  him  from  far  off — he  sank  here,  on 
his  threshold;  and  then  it  went  horribly  fast.  I 
cling  for  the  present  to  them — and  so  try  to  stay 
here  through  this  month.  After  that  I  shall  be 
with  them  in  Cambridge  for  several  more — we  shall 
cleave  more  together.  I  should  like  to  come  and 
see  you  for  a  couple  of  days  much,  but  it  would 


168       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1910 

have  to  be  after  the  20th,  or  even  October  1st,  I 
think ;  and  I  fear  you  may  not  then  be  still  in  villeg- 
giatura.  //  so  I  will  come.  You  knew  him — 
among  those  living  now — from  furthest  back  with 
me.  Yours  and  Lilla's  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

Chocorua,  N.H. 

Sept.  9th,  1910. 
Dearest  Edith, 

Your  letter  from  Annecy  .  .  .  touches  me, 
as  I  sit  here  stricken  and  in  darkness,  with  the 
tenderest  of  hands.  It  was  all  to  become  again  a 
black  nightmare  (what  seems  to  me  such  now,) 
from  very  soon  after  I  left  you,  to  these  days  of 
attempted  readjustment  of  life,  on  the  basis  of  my 
beloved  brother's  irredeemable  absence  from  it,  in 
which  I  take  my  part  with  my  sister-in-law  and  his 
children  here.  I  quitted  you  at  Folkestone,  August 
9th  (just  a  month  ago  to-day — and  it  seems  six!) 
to  find  him,  at  Lamb  House,  apparently  not  a 
little  eased  by  the  devoted  Skinner,  and  with  the 
elements  much  more  auspicious  for  our  journey 
than  they  had  been  a  fortnight  before.  We  got 
well  enough  to  town  on  the  llth,  and  away  from 
it,  to  Liverpool,  on  the  12th,  and  the  voyage,  in  the 
best  accommodations  &e  we  had  ever  had  at  sea, 
and  of  a  wondrous  lakelike  and  riverlike  fairness 
and  brevity,  might,  if  he  had  been  really  less  ill, 
have  made  for  his  holding  his  ground.  But  he 
grew  rapidly  worse  again  from  the  start  and  suf 
fered  piteously  and  dreadfully  (with  the  increase 
of  his  difficulty  in  breathing;)  and  we  got  him  at 
last  to  this  place  (on  the  evening  of  the  Friday  fol 
lowing  that  of  our  sailing)  only  to  see  him  begin 
swiftly  to  sink.  The  sight  of  the  rapidity  of  it  at 


AET.  67  TO  MRS.  WHARTON  169 

the  last  was  an  unutterable  pang— my  sense  of 
what  he  had  still  to  give,  of  his  beautiful  genius 
and  noble  intellect  at  their  very  climax,  never  hav 
ing  been  anything  but  intense,  and  in  fact  having 
been  intenser  than  ever  all  these  last  months.    How 
ever,  my  relation  to  him  and  my  affection  for  him, 
and  the  different  aspect  his  extinction  has  given 
for  me  to  my  life,  are  all  unutterable  matters; 
fortunately,  as  there  would  be  so.  much  to  say  about 
them  if  I  said  anything  at  all.    The  effect  of  it  all 
is  that  I  shall  stay  on  here  for  the  present— for      * 
some  months  to  come   (I  mean  in  this  country;) 
and  then  return  to  England  never  to  revisit  these 
shores  again.    I  am  inexpressibly- glad  to  have  been, 
and  even  to  be,  here  now— I  cling  to  my  sister-in- 
law  and  my  nephews  and  niece:  they  are  all  (won 
derful  to  say)  such  admirable,  lovable,  able  and  in 
teresting  persons,  and  they  cling  to  me  in  return.  I 
hope  to  be  in  this  spot  with  them  till  Oct.  15th— 
there  is  a  great  appeal  in  it  from  its  saturation  with 
my  brother's  presence  and  life  here,  his  use  and  lik 
ing  of  it  for  23  years,  a  sad  subtle  consecration 
which  plays  out  the  more  where  so  few  other  things 
interfere   with   it.    Ah,   the   thin,   empty,   lonely, 
melancholy  American  "beauty" — which  I  yet  find 
a  cold  prudish  charm  in!    I  shall  go  back  to  Cam 
bridge  with  my  companions  and  stay  there  at  least 
till  the  New  Year — which  is  all  that  seems  definite 
for  the  present.  .  .  . 

All  devotedly  yours,  dearest  Edith, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


170       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1910 


To  Mrs.  Charles  Hunter. 

Chocorua,  N.H. 
Oct  :  1  :  1910. 

Dearest  Mary  Hunter, 

Beautiful  and  tender  the  letter  I  just  receive 
from  you — and  that  follows  by  a  few  days  an 
equally  beneficent  one  to  my  sister.  She  will  (if 
she  hasn't  done  it  already)  thank  you  for  this  her 
self — and  tell  you  how  deeply  we  feel  the  kindly 
balm  of  your  faithful  thought  of  us.  Our  return 
here,  with  my  brother  so  acutely  suffering  and  so 
all  too  precipitately  (none  the  less)  succumbing 
altogether — quite  against  what  seemed  presumable 
during  our  last  three  weeks  in  England — was  a 
dreadful  time;  from  the  worst  darkness  of  which 
we  are,  however,  gradually  emerging.  .  .  .  What 
is  for  the  time  a  great  further  support  is  the  won 
drous  beauty  of  this  region,  where  we  are  lingering 
on  three  or  four  weeks  more  (when  it  becomes  too 
cold  in  a  house  built  only  for  summer — in  spite  of 
glorious  wood-fires;)  this  season  being  the  finest 
thing  in  the  American  year  for  weather  and  colour. 
The  former  is  golden  and  the  latter,  amid  these 
innumerable  mountains  and  great  forests  and  fre 
quent  lakes,  a  magnificence  of  crimson  and  orange, 
a  mixture  of  flames  and  gems.  I  shall  stay  for 
some  months  (I  mean  on  this  side  of  the  sea;)  and 
yet  I  am  so  homesick  that  I  seem  to  feel  that  when 
I  do  get  back  to  dear  little  old  England,  I  shall 
never  in  my  life  leave  it  againi  We  cling  to  each 
other,  all  of  us  here,  meanwhile,  and  I  can  never  be 
sufficiently  grateful  to  my  fate  for  my  having  been 
with  my  dearest  brother  for  so  many  weeks  before 
his  death  and  up  to  the  bitter  end.  I  am  better  and 
better  than  three  months  ago,  thank  heaven,  in 
spite  of  everything,  and  really  believe  I  shall  end 


AET.  67    TO  MRS.  CHARLES  HUNTER       171 

by  being  better  than  I  have  been  at  all  these  last 
years,  when  I  was  spoiling  for  my  illness.  I  pray 
most  devoutly  that  Salso  will  again  repay  and  re 
fresh  and  comfort  you;  I  absolutely  yearn  to  see 
you,  and  I  am  yours  all  affectionately  always, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  W.  K.  Clifford. 

95  Irving  Street, 
Cambridge,  Mass. 

October  29th,  1910. 
Dearest  Lucy! 

My  silence  has  been  atrocious,  since  the  re 
ceipt  of  two  quite  divine  letters  from  you,  but  the 
most  particular  blessing  of  you  is  that  with  you 
one  needn't  explain  nor  elaborate  nor  take  up  the 
burden  of  dire  demonstration,  because  you  under 
stand  and  you  feel,  you  allow,  and  you  know,  and 
above  all  you  love  (your  poor  old  entangled  and 
afflicted  H.  J.).  .  .  .  Now  at  last  I  am  really  on 
the  rise  and  on  the  higher  ground  again — more  than 
I  have  been,  and  more  unmistakeably,  than  at  any 
time  since  the  first  of  my  illness.  Your  letters 
meanwhile,  dearest  Lucy,  were  admirable  and  ex 
quisite,  in  their  rare  beauty  of  your  knowing,  for 
the  appreciation  of  such  a  loss  and  such  a  wound, 
immensely  what  you  were  talking  about.  Every 
word  went  to  my  heart,  and  it  was  as  if  you  sat  by 
me  and  held  my  hand  and  let  me  wail,  and  wailed 
yourself,  so  gently  and  intelligently,  with  me.  The 
extinction  of  such  a  presence  in  my  life  as  my 
great  and  radiant  (even  in  suffering  and  sorrow) 
brother's,  means  a  hundred  things  that  I  can't  begin 
to  say;  but  immense,  all  the  same,  are  the  abiding 
possessions,  the  interest  and  the  honour.  We  will 
talk  of  all  these  things  by  your  endlessly  friendly 


172       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1010 

fire  in  due  time  again  (oh  how  I  gnash  my  teeth 
with  homesickness  at  that  dear  little  Chil worth  St. 
vision  of  old  lamp  lit  gossiping  hours!)  and  we  will 
pull  together  meanwhile  as  intimately  and  unitedly 
as  possible  even  thus  across  the  separating  sea.  I 
have  pretty  well  settled  to  remain  on  this  side  of 
that  wintry  obstacle  till  late  in  the  spring.  I  am 
at  present  with  my  priceless  sister-in-law  and  her 
dear  delightful  children.  We  came  back  a  short 
time  since  from  the  country  (I  going  for  ten  days 
to  New  York,  the  prodigious,  from  which  I  have 
just  returned,  while  she,  after  her  so  long  and 
tragic  absence,  settled  us  admirably  for  the  winter. ) 
We  all  hang  unspeakably  together,  and  that's  why 
I  am  staying.  I  am  getting  back  to  work — though 
the  flood  of  letters  to  be  breasted  by  reason  of  my 
brother's  death  and  situation  has  been  formidable 
in  the  extreme,  and  the  "breasting"  (with  the  very 
weak  hand  only  that  I  have  been  able  till  now  to 
lend)  is  even  yet  far  from  over.  My  companions 
are  unspeakably  kind  to  me,  and  I  cherish  the  break 
in  the  excess  of  solitude  that  I  have  been  steeped 
in  these  last  years.  If  I  get  as  "well"  as  I  see 
reason  now  at  last  to  believe,  I  shall  be  absolutely 
better  than  at  any  time  for  three  or  four — and  shall 
even  feel  sweetly  younger  (by  a  miraculous  emer 
gence  from  my  hideous  year.)  Dreams  of  work 
come  back  to  me — which  I've  a  superstitious  dread 
still,  however,  of  talking  about.  Materially  and 
carnally  speaking  my  "comfort" — odious  word! — 
in  a  most  pleasant,  commodious  house,  is  absolute, 
and  is  much  fostered  by  my  having  brought  with 
me  my  devoted  if  diminutive  Burgess,  whom  you 
will  remember  at  Lamb  House.  .  .  .  During  all 
which  time,  however,  see  how  I  don't  prod  you  with 
questions  about  yourself — in  spite  of  my  burning 
thirst  for  knowledge.  After  the  generosity  of  your 
letters  of  last  month  how  can  I  ask  you  to  labour 
again  in  my  too  thankless  cause?  But  I  do  yearn 


AET.  67      TO  MRS.  W.  K.  CLIFFORD          173 

over  you,  and  I  needn't  tell  you  how  any  rough 
sketch  of  your  late  history  will  gladden  my  sight. 
I  wrote  a  day  or  two  ago  to  Hugh  Walpole  and  be 
sought  him  to  go  and  see  you  and  make  me  some 
sign  of  you — which  going  and  gathering-in  I  hope 
he  of  himself,  and  constantly,  takes  to.  I  think  of 
you  as  always  heroic — but  I  hope  that  no  particular 
extra  need  for  it  has  lately  salted  your  cup.  Is 
Margaret  on  better  ground  again?  God  grant  it! 
But  such  things  as  I  wish  to  talk  about — I  mean 
that  we  might  I  But  with  patience  the  hour  will 
strike — like  silver  smiting  silver.  Till  then  I  am 
so  far-offishly  and  so  affectionately  yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  W.  E.  Norris. 

95  Irving  St. 
Cambridge,   Mass. 
Dec.  13th,  1910. 
My  dear  Norris, 

I  detest  the  thought  that  some  good  word 
or  other  from  me  shouldn't  add  to  the  burden  with 
which  your  Xmas  table  will  groan;  fortunately  too 
the  decently  "good"  word  (as  goods  go  at  this  dark 
crisis)  is  the  one  that  I  can  break  my  long  and 
hideous  silence  to  send  you.  The  only  difficulty  is 
that  when  silences  have  been  so  long  and  so  hideous 
the  renewal  of  the  communication,  the  patching-up 
(as  regards  the  mere  facts)  of  the  weakened  and 
ragged  link,  becomes  in  itself  a  necessity,  or  a  ques 
tion,  formidable  even  to  deterrence.  I  have  had 
verily  an  ann-ee  terrible — the  fag-end  of  which  is, 
however,  an  immense  improvement  on  everything 
that  has  preceded  it.  I  won't  attempt,  none  the 
less,  to  make  up  arrears  of  information  in  any  de 
gree  whatever — but  simply  let  off  at  you  this  rude 


174       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1910 

but  affectionate  signal  from  the  desert-island  of 
my  shipwreck — or  what  would  be  such  if  my  situa 
tion  were  not,  on  the  whole,  the  one  with  which  I 
am  for  the  present  most  in  tune.  I  am  staying  on 
here  with  my  dear  and  admirable  sister-in-law  and 
her  children,  with  whom  I  have  been  ever  since  my 
beloved  and  illustrious  elder  brother's  death  in  the 
country  at  the  end  of  August.  .  .  .  My  younger 
brother  had  died  just  a  month  before — and  I  am 
alone  now,  of  my  father's  once  rather  numerous 
house.  But  there — I  am  trying  to  pick  up  lost 
chords — which  is  what  I  didn't  mean  to  ...  I 
expect  to  stick  fast  here  through  January  and  then 
go  for  a  couple  of  months  to  New  York — after 
which  I  shall  begin  to  turn  my  face  to  England — 
heaven  send  that  day!  The  detail  of  this  is,  how 
ever,  fluid  and  subject  to  alteration — in  everything 
save  my  earnest  purpose  of  struggling  back  by 
April  or  May  at  furthest  to  your  (or  verily  my) 
distressed  country;  for  which  I  unceasingly  lan 
guish.  .  .  .  The  material  conditions  here  (that  is 
the  best  of  them — others  intensely  and  violently 
not)  suit  me  singularly  at  present;  as  for  instance 
the  great  and  glorious  American  fact  of  weather, 
to  which  it  all  mainly  comes  back,  but  which,  since 
last  August  here,  I  have  never  known  anything  to 
surpass.  While  I  write  you  this  I  bask  in  golden 
December  sunshine  and  dry,  crisp,  mild  frost — 
over  a  great  nappe  of  recent  snow,  which  flushes 
with  the  "tenderest"  lights.  \This  does  me  a  world 
of  good — and  the  fact  that  I  have  brought  with 
me  my  little  Lamb  House  servant,  who  has  lived 
with  me  these  10  years;  but  for  the  rest  my  life  is 
exclusively  in  this  one  rich  nest  of  old  affections  and 
memories.  I  put  you,  you  see,  no  questions,  but 
please  find  half  a  dozen  very  fond  ones  wrapped 
up  in  every  good  wish  I  send  you  for  the  coming 
year.  A  couple  of  nos.  of  the  Times  have  just 
come^  in — and  though  the  telegraph  has  made 


AET.  67  TO  W.   E.   NORRIS  175 

them  rather  ancient  history  I  hang  over  them  for 
the  dear  old  more  vivid  sense  of  it  all.  .  .  . 
Yours,  my  dear  Norris,  all  affectionately, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

95  Irving  Street, 
Cambridge,  Mass. 

Feb.  9th,  1911. 
Dearest  Edith, 

Hideous  and  infamous,  yes,  my  intermina 
ble,  my  abjectly  graceless  silence.  But  it  always 
comes,  in  these  abnormal  months,  from  the  same 
sorry  little  cause,  which  I  have  already  named  to 
you  to  such  satiety  that  I  really  might  omit  any 
further  reference  to  it.  Somehow,  none  the  less,  I 
find  a  vague  support  in  my  consciousness  of  an  un 
surpassable  abjection  (as  aforesaid)  in  naming  it 
once  more  to  myself  and  putting  afresh  on  record 
that  there's  a  method  in  what  I  feel  might  pass  for 
my  madness  if  you  weren't  so  nobly  sane.  To  write 
is  perforce  to  report  of  myself  and  my  condition — 
and  nothing  has  happened  to  make  that  process  any 
less  an  evil  thing.  It's  horrible  to  me  to  report 
darkly  and  dismally  —  and  yet  I  never  venture 
three  steps  in  the  opposite  direction  without  having 
the  poor  effrontery  flung  back  in  my  face  as  an  out 
rage  on  the  truth.  In  other  words,  to  report  favour 
ably  is  instantly — or  at  very  short  order — to  be 
hurled  back  on  the  couch  of  anguish — so  that  the 
only  thing  has,  for  the  most  part,  been  to  stay  my 
pen  rather  than  not  report  favourably.  You'll  say 
doubtless:  "Damn  you,  why  report  at  all — if  you 
are  so  crassly  superstitious?  Answer  civilly  and 
prettily  and  punctually  when  a  lady  (and  'such  a 
lady,'  as  Browning  says!)  generously  and  a  deux 
reprises  writes  to  you — without  'dragging  in  Velas- 


176       LETTERS  OP  HENRY  JAMES       ion 

quez'  at  all."  Very  well  then,  I'll  try — though  it 
was  after  all  pretty  well  poor  old  Velasquez  who 
came  back  three  evenings  since  from  23  days  in 
New  York,  and  at  21  East  llth  St.,  of  which  the 
last  six  were  practically  spent  in  bed.  He  had  had 
a  very  fairly  flourishing  fortnight  in  that  kindest 
of  houses  and  tenderest  of  cares  and  genialest  of 
companies — and  then  repaid  it  all  by  making  him 
self  a  burden  and  a  bore.  I  got  myself  out  of  the 
way  as  soon  as  possible — by  scrambling  back  here ; 
and  yet,  all  inconsequently,  I  think  it  likely  I  shall 
return  there  in  March  to  perform  the  same  evolu 
tion.  In  the  intervals  I  quite  take  notice — but  at 
a  given  moment  everything  temporarily  goes.  I 
come  up  again  and  quite  well  up — as  how  can  I  not 
in  order  again  to  re-taste  the  bitter  cup  ?  But  here 
I  am  "reporting  of  myself"  with  a  vengeance — 
forgive  me  if  it's  too  dreary.  When  all's  said  and 
done  it  will  eventually — the  whole  case — become 
less  so.  Meanwhile,  too,  for  my  consolation,  I  have 
picked  up  here  and  there  wind-borne  bribes,  of  a 
more  or  less  authentic  savour,  from  your  own  groan 
ing  board;  and  my  poor  old  imagination  does  me 
in  these  days  no  better  service  than  by  enabling  me 
to  hover,  like  a  too-participant  larbin,  behind  your 
Louis  XIV  chair  (if  it  isn't,  your  chair,  Louis 
Quatorze,  at  least  your  larbin  takes  it  so. )  I  gather 
you've  been  able  to  drive  the  spirited  pen  without 
cataclysms.  ...  I  take  unutterable  comfort  in 
the  thought  that  two  or  three  months  hence  you'll 
probably  be  seated  on  the  high-piled  and  done  book 
— in  the  magnificent  authority  of  the  position,  even 
as  Catherine  II  on  the  throne  of  the  Czars.  (For 
give  the  implications  of  the  comparison!)  Work 
seems  far  from  me  yet — though  perhaps  a  few 
inches  nearer.  A  report  even  reaches  me  to  the  ef 
fect  that  there's  a  possibility  of  your  deciding  .  .  . 
to  come  over  and  spend  the  summer  at  the  Mount, 
and  this  is  above  all  a  word  to  say  that  in  case  you 


ABT.  67  TO  MRS.  WHARTON  177 

should  do  so  at  all  betimes  you  will  probably  still 
see  me  here;  as  though  I  have  taken  my  passage 
for  England  my  date  is  only  the  14th  June.  There 
fore  should  you  come  May  1st — well,  Porphyro 
grows  faint!  I  yearn  over  this — since  if  you 
shouldn't  come  then  (and  yet  should  be  coming  at 
all,)  heaven  knows  when  we  shall  meet  again. 
There  are  enormous  reasons  for  my  staying  here 
till  then,  and  enormous  ones  against  my  staying 
longer. 

Such,  dearest  Edith,  is  my  meagre  budget — 
forgive  me  if  it  isn't  brighter  and  richer.  I  am  but 
just  pulling  through — and  I  am  doing  that,  but 
no  more,  and  so,  you  see,  have  no  wild  graces  or 
wavy  tendrils  left  over  for  the  image  I  project.  I 
shall  try  to  grow  some  again,  little  by  little ;  but  for 
the  present  am  as  ungarnished  in  every  way  as  an 
aged  plucked  fowl  before  the  cook  has  dealt  with 
him.  May  the  great  Chef  see  his  way  to  serve  me 
up  to  you  some  day  in  some  better  sauce !  As  I  am, 
at  any  rate,  share  me  generously  with  your  I  am 
sure  not  infrequent  commensaux  .  .  .  and  ask 
them  to  make  the  best  of  me  (an'  they  love  me — 
as  I  love  them)  even  if  you  give  them  only  the 
drumsticks  and  keep  the  comparatively  tender, 
though  much  shrivelled,  if  once  mighty,  "pinion" 
for  yourself  ...  I  saw  no  one  of  the  least  "real 
fascination"  (excuses  du  pen  of  the  conception!) 
in  N.Y. — but  the  place  relieved  and  beguiled  me— 
so  long  as  I  was  debout — and  Mary  Cadwal  and 
Beatrix  were  as  tenderest  nursing  mother  and 
bonniest  soeur  de  lait  to  me  the  whole  day  long. 
I  really  think  I  shall  take — shall  risk — another  go 
of  it  before  long  again,  and  even  snatch  a  "bite" 
of  Washington  (Washington  pie,  as  we  used  to 
say,)  to  which  latter  the  dear  H.  Whites  have  most 
kindly  challenged  me.  Well,  such,  dearest  Edith, 
are  the  short  and  simple  annals  of  the  poor!  I  hang 
about  you,  however  inarticulately,  de  toutes  les 


178       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1911 

forces  de  mon  etre  and  am  always  your  fondly 
faithful  old 

HENKY  JAMES. 


To  Miss  Rhoda  Broughton. 

95  Irving  Street, 
Cambridge,  Mass. 
February  25th,  1911. 

Dear  Rhoda  Broughton, 

I  hate,  and  have  hated  all  along,  the  ac 
cumulation  of  silence  and  darkness  in  the  once  so 
bright  and  animated  air  of  our  ancient  commerce — 
that  is  our  old  and  so  truly  valid  friendship;  and 
I  am  irresistibly  moved  to  strike  a  fresh  light,  as 
it  were,  and  sound  a  hearty  call — so  that  the  un 
canny  spell  may  break  (working,  as  it  has  done, 
so  much  by  my  own  fault,  or  my  great  infirmity.) 
I  have  just  had  a  letter  from  dear  Mary  Clarke, 
not  overflowing  with  any  particularly  blest  tidings, 
and  containing,  as  an  especial  note  of  the  minor 
key,  an  allusion  to  your  apparently  aggravated 
state  of  health  and  rather  captive  condition.  This 
has  caused  a  very  sharp  pang  in  my  battered  breast 
— for  steadily  battered  I  have  myself  been,  battered 
all  round  and  altogether,  these  long  months  and 
months  past:  even  if  not  to  the  complete  extinction 
of  a  tender  sense  for  the  woes  of  others. 

...  I  tell  you  my  sorry  tale,  please  believe  me, 
not  to  harrow  you  up  or  "work  upon"  you — under 
the  harrow  as  you  have  yourself  been  so  cruelly 
condemned  to  sit;  but  only  because  when  one  has 
been  long  useless  and  speechless  and  graceless,  and 
when  one's  poor  powers  then  again  begin  to  reach 
out  for  exercise,  one  immensely  wants  a  few  per 
sons  to  know  that  one  hasn't  been  basely  indifferent 


AET.  07  TO  MISS  RHODA  BROUGHTON     179 

or  unaware,  but  simply  gagged,  so  to  speak,  and 
laid  low — simply  helpless  and  reduced  to  naught. 
And  then  my  desire  has  been  great  to  talk  with 
you,  and  I  even  feel  that  I  am  doing  so  a  little 
through  this  pale  and  limping  substitute — and  such 
are  some  of  the  cheerful  points  I  should  infallibly 
have  made  had  I  been — or  were  I  just  now — face 
to  face  with  you.  Heaven  speed  the  day  for  some 
occasion  more  like  that  larger  and  braver  contact 
than  these  ineffectual  accents.  Such  are  the  pray 
ers  with  which  I  beguile  the  tedium  of^ast  wastes 
of  homesickness  here — where,  frankly,'  the  sense  of 
aching  exile  attends  me  the  live-long  day,  and  re 
sists  even  the  dazzle  of  such  days  as  these  particular 
ones  happen  to  be — a  glory  of  golden  sunshine  and 
air  both  crisp  and  soft,  that  pours  itself  out  in  un 
stinted  floods  and  would  transfigure  and  embellish 
the  American  scene  to  my  jaundiced  eye  if  any 
thing  could.  But  better  fifty  years  of  fogland — 
where  indeed  I  have,  alas,  almost  had  my  fifty 
years!  However,  count  on  me  to  at  least  try  to 
put  in  a  few  more. 

...  I  hear  from  Howard  Sturgis,  and  I  hear, 
that  is  have  heard  from  W.  E.  N  orris;  but  so  have 
you,  doubtless,  oftener  and  more  cheeringly  than 
I:  all  such  communications  seem  to  me  today  in 
the  very  minor  key  indeed — in  which  respect  they 
match  my  own  (you  at  least  will  say !)  But  I  don't 
dream  of  your  "answering"  this — it  pretends  to  all 
the  purity  of  absolutely  disinterested  affection.  I 
only  wish  I  could  fold  up  in  it  some  faint  reflection 
of  the  flood  of  golden  winter  sunshine,  some  breath 
of  the  still,  mild,  already  vernal  air  that  wraps  me 
about  here  (as  I  just  mentioned,)  while  I  write, 
and  reminds  me  that  grim  and  prim  Boston  is  after 
all  in  the  latitude  of  Rome — though  indeed  only 
to  mock  at  the  aching  impatience  of  your  all  faith 
ful,  forth-reaching  old  friend, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


180       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1911 


To  H.  G.  Wells. 

95  Irving  Street, 
Cambridge,  Mass. 
March  3rd,  1911. 

My  dear  Wells, 

I  seem  to  have  had  notice  from  my  house 
keeper  at  Rye  that  you  have  very  kindly  sent  me 
there  a  copy  of  the  New  Machiavelli — which  she 
has  forborne  to  forward  me  to  these  tariff -guarded 
shores;  in  obedience  to  my  general  instructions. 
But  this  needn't  prevent  me  from  thanking  you 
for  the  generous  gift,  which  will  keep  company 
with  a  brave  row  of  other  such  valued  signs  of  your 
remembrance  at  Lamb  House;  thanking  you  all 
the  more  too  that  I  hadn't  waited  for  gift  or  guer 
don  to  fall  on  you  and  devour  you,  but  have  just 
lately  been  finding  the  American  issue  of  your 
wondrous  book  a  sufficient  occasion  for  that.  Thus 
it  is  that  I  can't  rest  longer  till  I  make  you  some 
small  sign  at  last  of  my  conscious  indebtedness. 

I  have  read  you  then,  I  need  scarcely  tell  you, 
with  an  intensified  sense  of  that  life  and  force  and 
temperament,  that  fulness  of  endowment  and  easy 
impudence  of  genius,  which  makes  you  extraordi 
nary  and  which  have  long  claimed  my  unstinted 
admiration:  you  being  for  me  so  much  the  most 
interesting  and  masterful  prose-painter  of  your 
English  generation  (or  indeed  of  your  generation 
unqualified)  that  I  see  you  hang  there  over  the  sub 
ject  scene  practically  all  alone;  a  far-flaring  even 
though  turbid  and  smoky  lamp,  projecting  the 
most  vivid  and  splendid  golden  splotches,  creating 
them  about  the  field — shining  scattered  innumer 
able  morsels  of  a  huge  smashed  mirror.  I  seem  to 
feel  that  there  can  be  no  better  proof  of  your  great 
gift — The  N.M.  makes  me  most  particularly  feel 
it — than  that  you  bedevil  and  coerce  to  the  extent 


AET.  67  TO   H.   G.   WELLS  181 

you  do  such  a  reader  and  victim  as  I  am,  I  mean 
one  so  engaged  on  the  side  of  ways  and  attempts 
to  which  yours  are  extremely  alien,  and  for  whom 
the  great  interest  of  the  art  we  practise  involves 
a  lot  of  considerations  and  preoccupations  over 
which  you  more  and  more  ride  roughshod  and 
triumphant — when  you  don't,  that  is,  with  a  strange 
and  brilliant  impunity  of  your  own,  leave  them  to 
one  side  altogether  (which  is  indeed  what  you  now 
apparently  incline  most  to  do.)  Your  big  feeling 
for  life,  your  capacity  for  chewing  up  the  thickness 
of  the  world  in  such  enormous  mouthfuls,  while  you 
fairly  slobber,  so  to  speak,  with  the  multitudinous 
taste — this  constitutes  for  me  a  rare  and  wonderful 
and  admirable  exhibition,  on  your  part,  in  itself, 
so  that  one  should  doubtless  frankly  ask  one's  self 
what  the  devil,  in  the  way  of  effect  and  evocation 
and  general  demonic  activity,  one  wants  more. 
Well,  I  am  willing  for  to-day  to  let  it  stand  at  that ; 
the  whole  of  the  earlier  part  of  the  book,  or  the  first 
half,  is  so  alive  and  kicking — and  sprawling! — so 
vivid  and  rich  and  strong — above  all  so  amusing 
(in  the  high  sense  of  the  word,)  and  I  make  re 
monstrance — for  I  do  remonstrate — bear  upon  the 
bad  service  you  have  done  your  cause  by  riding  so 
hard  again  that  accurst  autobiographic  form  which 
puts  a  premium  on  the  loose,  the  improvised,  the 
cheap  and  the  easy.  Save  in  the  fantastic  and  the 
romantic  (Copperfield,  Jane  Eyre,  that  charming 
thing  of  Stevenson's  with  the  bad  title — "Kid 
napped"?)  it  has  no  authority,  no  persuasive  or 
convincing  force — its  grasp  of  reality  and  truth 
isn't  strong  and  disinterested.  R.  Crusoe,  e.g., 
isn't  a  novel  at  all.  There  is,  to  my  vision,  no 
authentic,  and  no  really  interesting  and  no  beauti 
ful,  report  of  things  on  the  novelist's,  the  painter's 
part  unless  a  particular  detachment  has  operated, 
unless  the  great  stewpot  or  crucible  of  the  imagina 
tion,  of  the  observant  and  recording  and  interpret- 


182       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1911 

ing  mind  in  short,  has  intervened  and  played  its 
part — and  this  detachment,  this  chemical  transmu 
tation  for  the  aesthetic,  the  representational,  end 
is  terribly  wanting  in  autobiography  brought,  as 
the  horrible  phrase  is,  up  to  date.  That's  my  main 
"criticism"  on  the  N.M. — and  on  the  whole  ground 
there  would  be  a  hundred  things  more  to  say.  It's 
accurst  that  I  am  not  near  enough  to  you  to  say 
them  in  less  floundering  fashion  than  this — but 
give  me  time  (I  return  to  England  in  June,  never 
again,  D.V.,  to  leave  it — surprise  Mr.  Remington 
thereby  as  I  may!)  and  we  will  jaw  as  far  as  you 
will  keep  me  company.  Meanwhile  I  don't  want 
to  send  across  the  wintry  sea  anything  but  my  ex 
pressed  gratitude  for  the  immense  impressionistic 
and  speculative  wealth  and  variety  of  your  book. 
Yours,  my  dear  Wells,  ever, 

HENRY  JAMES. 

P.S.  I  think  the  exhibition  of  "Love"  as  "Love" 
— functional  Love — always  suffers  from  a  certain 
inevitable  and  insurmountable  flat-footedness  (for 
the  reader's  nerves  etc.;)  which  is  only  to  be  coun 
terplotted  by  roundabout  arts — as  by  tracing  it 
through  indirectness  and  tortuosities  of  applica 
tion  and  effect — to  keep  it  somehow  interesting  and 
productive  (though  I  don't  mean  reproductive!) 
But  this  again  is  a  big  subject. 

P.S. 2.  I  am  like  your  hero's  forsaken  wife:  I 
know  having  things  (the  things  of  life,  history,  the 
world)  only  as,  and  by  keeping  them.  So,  and  so 
only,  I  do  have  them! 


AET.  67  TO  C.  E.  WHEELER  183 


To  C.  E.  Wheeler. 

"The  Outcry"  had  not  appeared  on  the  stage,  but 
was  shortly  to  be  published  in  the  form  of  a  narrative. 
The  following  refers  to  a  suggestion,  not  carried  further 
at  this  time,  that  the  play  might  be  performed  by  the 
Stage  Society. 

21  East  Eleventh  Street, 
New  York  City. 

April  9th,  1911. 
Dear  Christopher  Wheeler, 

I  am  not  back  in  England,  as  you  see,  and 
shall  not  be  till  toward  the  end  of  June.  I  have 
almost  recovered  from  the  very  compromised  state 
in  which  my  long  illness  of  last  year  left  me,  but 
not  absolutely  and  wholly.  I  am,  however,  in  a 
very  much  better  way,  and  the  rest  is  a  question  of 
more  or  less  further  patience  and  prudence.  About 
the  "Outcry,"  in  the  light  of  your  plan,  I  am  afraid 
that  the  moment  isn't  favourable  for  me  to  discuss 
or  decide.  I  have  made  a  disposition,  a  "literary 
use,"  of  that  work  (so  as  not  to  have  to  view  it  as 
merely  wasted  labour  on  the  one  hand  and  not 
sickeningly  to  hawk  it  about  on  the  other)  which 
isn't  propitious  to  any  other  present  dealing  with 
it — though  it  might  not  (in  fact  certainly  wouldn't) 
[be  unfavourable]  to  some  eventual  theatrical  life 
for  it.  Before  I  do  anything  else  I  must  first  see 
what  shall  come  of  the  application  I  have  made  of 
my  play.  This,  you  see,  is  a  practically  unhelpful 
answer  to  your  interesting  inquiry,  and  I  am  sorry 
the  actual  situation  so  limits  the  matter.  I  rejoice 
in  your  continued  interest  in  the  theatrical  question, 
and  I  dare  say  your  idea  as  to  a  repertory  effort  on 
the  lines  you  mention  is  a  thing  of  light  and  life. 
But  I  have  little  heart  or  judgment  left,  as  I  grow 
older,  for  the  mere  theatrical  mystery:  the  drama 
interests  me  as  much  as  ever,  but  I  see  the  theatre- 


184       LETTERS  OP  HENRY  JAMES       1911 

experiment  of  this,  that  or  the  other  supposedly 
enlightened  kind  prove,  all  round  me,  so  abysmally 
futile  and  fallacious  and  treacherous  that  I  am 
practically  quite  "off"  from  it  and  can  but  let  it 
pass.  Pardon  my  weary  cynicism — and  try  me 
again  later.  The  conditions — the  theatre-question 
generally — in  this  country  are  horrific  and  unspeak 
able — utter,  and  so  far  as  I  can  see  irreclaimable, 
barbarism  reigns.  The  anomalous  fact  is  that  the 
theatre,  so  called,  can  flourish  in  barbarism,  but 
that  any  drama  worth  speaking  of  can  develop 
but  in  the  air  of  civilization.  However,  keep  tight 
hold  of  your  clue  and  believe  me  yours  ever, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Dr.  J.  William  White. 

95  Irving  Street, 
Cambridge,  Mass. 

May  12th,  1911. 
My  dear  J.  William, 

I  have  from  far  back  so  dragged  you,  and 
the  gentle  Letitia  even,  not  less,  through  the  deep 
dark  desperate  discipline  of  my  unmatched  genius 
for  not  being  quick  on  the  epistolary  trigger,  that, 
with  such  a  perfection  of  schooling — quite  my  prize 
pupils  and  little  show  performers  in  short — I  can 
be  certain  that  you  won't  so  much  as  have  turned 
a  hair  under  my  recent  probably  unsurpassed  ex 
hibitions  of  it.  Nevertheless  I  shall  expect  you  to 
sit  up  and  look  bright  and  gratified  (even  quite  in 
telligent — like  true  heads  of  the  class)  now  that  I 
do  write  and  reward  your  exemplary  patience  and 
beautiful  drill.  Yes,  dear  prize  pupils,  I  feel  I  can 
fully  depend  on  you  to  regard  the  present  as  a 
"regular  answer"  to  your  sweet  letter  from  Ber 
muda;  or  to  behave,  beautifully,  as  if  you  did — 
which  comes  to  the  same  thing.  Above  all  I  can 


AET.  68    TO  DR.  J.  WILLIAM  WHITE        185 

trust  you  to  believe  that  if  your  discipline  has  been 
stiff,  that  of  your  battered  and  tattered  old  discipli 
narian  himself  has  been  stiff er — incessant  and  un 
interrupted  and  really  not  leaving  him  a  moment's 
attention  for  anything  else.  He  is  still  very  limp 
and  bewildered  with  it  all — yet  with  a  gleam  of 
better  things  ahead,  that  after  his  dire  and  inter 
minable  ordeal,  and  though  the  gleam  has  but  just 
broken  out,  causes  him  to  turn  to  you  again  with 
that  fond  fidelity  which  enjoyed  its  liveliest  expres 
sion,  in  the  ancient  past,  on  the  day,  never  to  be 
forgotten,  when  we  had  such  an  affectionate  scuffle 
to  get  ahead  of  each  other  in  making  a  joyous  bon 
fire  of  Lamb  House  in  honour  of  your  so  acclaimed 
arrival  there :  Letitia  sitting  by,  with  her  impartial 
smile,  as  the  queen  of  beauty  at  a  Tournament. 
(She  will  remember  how  she  crowned  the  victor— 
I  modestly  forbear  to  name  him:  and  what  a  ruin 
ously — to  him — genial  feu  de  joie  resulted  from 
the  expensive  application  of  my  brandished  torch. ) 
Well,  the  upshot  of  it  all  is  that  I  have  put  off  my 
sailing  by  the  Mauretania  of  June  14th — but  not 
alas  to  your  Olympic,  vessel  of  the  gods,  evi 
dently,  later  that  month.  I  have  shifted  to  the 
same  Mauretania  of  August  2nd — urgent  and  in 
timate  family  reasons  making  for  my  stop-over  till 
then.  So  when  I  see  you  in  England,  as  I  fondly 
count  on  doing  after  this  dismal  interlude,  it  will 
be  during  the  delightful  weeks  you  will  spend  there 
in  the  autumn,  when  all  your  athletic  laurels  have 
been  gathered,  all  your  high-class  hotels  checked 
off,  all  your  obedient  servants  (except  me!)  tipped, 
and  all  your  portentous  drafts  honoured.  Let  us 
plot  out  those  sweet  September  days  a  little  even 
now — let  rue  at  least  dream  of  them  as  a  supreme 
test,  proof  and  consecration,  of  what  returning 
health  will  once  more  enable  me  to  stand.  I  am 
too  unutterably  glad  to  be  going  back  even  with 
a  further  delay — I  am  wasted  to  a  shadow  (even 


186      LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       ion 

though  the  shadow  of  a  still  formidable  mass)  by 
homesickness  (for  the  home  I  once  had — before 
we  applied  the  match.  You  see  the  loss  for  you 
now — by  the  way:  if  you  had  only  allowed  it  to 
stand!)  I  have  taken  places  in  the  Reform  Gal 
lery  "for  the  coronation" — and  won  them  by  ballot 
— for  the  second  procession :  and  now  palmed  them 
off  on  two  of  my  female  victims — after  such  a 
quandary  in  the  choice!  Apropos  of  coronations 
and  such-like,  won't  you,  when  you  write,  very 
kindly  give  me  some  news  of  the  dear  dashing 
Abbeys,  long  lost  to  sight  and  sound  of  me?  It 
has  come  round  to  me  in  vague  ways  that  they  have 
at  last  actually  left  Morgan  Hall  for  some  newly- 
acquired  princely  estate:  do  you  know  where  and 
what  the  place  is?  A  gentle  word  on  this  head 
would  immensely  assuage  my  curiosity.  Where- 
ever  and  whatever  it  is,  let  us  stay  there  together 
next  September!  You  see  therefore  how  practical 
my  demand  is.  Of  course  Ned  will  paint  this 
coronation  too — while  his  hand  is  in.  And  oh  you 
should  be  here  now  to  share  a  holy  rage  with  me. 
.  .  .  Such  is  this  babyish  democracy. 

Ever  your  grand,  yet  attached  old  aristocrat, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  T.  Bailey  Sanders. 

Barack-Matiff  Farm, 
Salisbury,  Conn. 

May  27,  1911. 
My  dear  Bailey, 

It  greatly  touches  and  gratifies  me  to  hear 
from  you — even  though  I  have  to  inflict  on  you  the 
wound  of  a  small  announced  (positively  last)  post 
ponement  of  my  re-appearance.  I  like  to  think 
that  you  may  be  a  little  wounded — wanton  as  that 


AET.  68     TO  T.  BAILEY  SAUNDERS  187 

declaration  sounds;  for  it  gives  me  the  measure  of 
my  being  cared  for  in  poor  dear  old  distracted 
England — than  which  there  can  be  no  sweeter  or 
more  healing  sense  to  my  bruised  and  aching  and 
oh  so  nostalgic  soul.  ...  I  am  exceedingly  better 
in  health,  I  thank  the  "powers" — and  even  pre 
sume  to  figure  it  out  that  I  shall  next  slip  between 
the  soft  swing-doors  of  Athene  in  the  character  of 
a  confirmed  improver,  struggler  upward,  or  even 
bay-crowned  victor  over  ills.  Don't  lament  my 
small  procrastination — a  matter  of  only  six  weeks; 
for  I  shall  then  still  better  know  where  and  how 
I  am.  I  am  at  the  present  hour  (more  literally) 
staying  with  some  amiable  cousins,  of  the  more 
amiable  sex — supposedly  at  least  (my  supposition 
is  not  about  the  cousins,  but  about  the  sex) — in 
the  deep  warm  heart  of  "New  England  at  its 
best."  This  large  Connecticut  scenery  of  moun 
tain  and  broad  vale,  recurrent  great  lake  and 
splendid  river  (the  great  Connecticut  itself,  the 
Housatonic,  the  Farmington,)  all  embowered  with 
truly  prodigious  elms  and  maples,  is  very  noble 
and  charming  and  sympathetic,  and  made — on  its 
great  scale  of  extent — to  be  dealt  with  by  the  blest 
motor-car,  the  consolation  of  my  declining  years. 
This  luxury  I  am  charitably  much  treated  to,  and 
it  does  me  a  world  of  good.  The  enormous,  the 
unique  ubiquity  of  the  "auto"  here  suggests  many 
reflections — but  I  can't  go  into  these  now,  or  into 
any  branch  of  the  prodigious  economic  or  "soci 
ological"  side  of  this  unspeakable  and  amazing 
country;  I  must  keep  such  matters  to  regale  you 
withal  in  poor  dear  little  Lamb  House  garden; 
for  one  brick  of  the  old  battered  purple  wall  of 
which  I  would  give  at  this  instant  (home-sick 
quand  meme)  the  whole  bristling  state  of  Con 
necticut.  I  shall  "stay  about"  till  I  embark — that 
may  represent  to  you  my  temperamental  or  other 
gain.  However,  you  must  autobiographically 


188       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1011 

regale  me  not   a   bit  less   than  yours,   my   dear 
Bailey,  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Sir  T.  H.  Warren. 

The  following  letter  to  the  President  of  Magdalen  refers 
to  the  offer  of  an  honorary  degree  at  Oxford,  subse 
quently  conferred  in  1912. 

Salisbury,  Connecticut. 
May  29th,  1911. 

My  dear  President, 

I  was  more  sorry  than  I  can  say  to  have 
to  cable  you  last  evening  in  that  disabled  sense. 
I  had  some  time  ago  taken  my  return  passage  to 
England  for  June  14th,  but  more  lately  the  Presi 
dent  of  Harvard  was  so  good  as  to  invite  me  to 
receive  an  Honorary  Degree  at  their  hands  on  the 
28th  of  that  month — the  same  day  as  your  En 
caenia.  Urgent  and  intimate  family  reasons  con 
spired  to  make  a  delay  advisable;  so  I  accepted 
the  Harvard  invitation  and  have  shifted  my  de 
parture  to  August  2nd. 

Behold  me  thus  committed  to  Harvard — and 
unable  moreover  at  this  season  of  the  multitu 
dinous  (I  mean  of  the  rush  to  Europe)  to  get  a 
decent  berth  on  an  outward  ship  even  were  I  to 
try.  The  formal  document  from  the  University 
arrived  with  your  kind  letter — proposing  to  me 
the  Degree  of  Doctor  of  Letters,  as  your  letter 
mentions;  and  quickened  my  great  regret  at  be 
ing  thus  perversely  prevented  from  embracing  an 
occasion  the  appeal  of  which  I  might  so  have 
connected  with  your  benevolence. 

I  should  feel  an  Oxford  degree  a  very  great 
honour  and  a  great  consideration,  and  I  am  writ 
ing  of  course  to  the  Registrar  of  the  University. 
I  rejoice  to  be  going  back  at  last  to  a  more 


AET.  68         TO  SIR  T.  H.  WARREN  189 

immediate — or  more  possible — sight  and  sound  of 
you  and  of  all  your  surrounding  amenities  and 
glories.  Yet  I  wish  too  I  could  open  to  you  for 
a  few  days  the  impression  of  the  things  about  me 
here;  in  the  warm,  the  very  warm,  heart  of  "New 
England  at  its  best,"  such  a  vast  abounding  Arcadia 
of  mountains  and  broad  vales  and  great  rivers 
and  large  lakes  and  white  villages  embowered  in 
prodigious  elms  and  maples.  It  is  extraordi 
narily  beautiful  and  graceful  and  idyllic — for 
America.  .  .  . 

I  am  very  sincerely  and  faithfully  and  grate 
fully  yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Miss  Ellen  Emmet. 

Mrs.  George  Hunter  and  her  daughters  had  been  H.  J.'s 
hostesses  at  Salisbury,  Connecticut,  in  the  preceding  May. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
Aug.  15th,  1911. 

Beloved  dearest  darling  Bay! 

Your  so  beautifully  human  letter  of  Aug. 
1st  reaches  me  here  this  a.m.  through  Harry — who 
appears  to  have  picked  it  out  of  perdition  at  the 
Belmont  after  I  had  sailed  (at  peep  of  dawn)  on 
Aug.  2nd.  It  deeply  and  exquisitely  touches 
me — so  bowed  down  under  the  shame  of  my  long 
silence  to  all  your  House,  to  your  splendid  mother 
in  particular,  have  I  remained  ever  since  the  day 
I  brought  my  little  visit  to  you  to  a  heated  close— 
which  sounds  absurdly  as  if  I  had  left  you  in  a 
rage  after  a  violent  discussion.  But  you  will  know 
too  well  what  I  mean  and  how  the  appalling  sum 
mer  that  was  even  then  beginning  so  actively  to 
cook  for  us  could  only  prove  a  well-nigh  fatal  dish 


190       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1911 

to  your  aged  and  infirm  uncle.  I  met  the  full  force 
of  this  awful  and  almost  (to  the  moment  I  sailed) 
unbroken  visitation  just  after  leaving  you — and, 
frankly,  it  simply  demoralized  me  and  flattened 
me  out.  Manners,  memories,  decencies,  all  alike 
fell  from  me  and  I  simply  lay  for  long  weeks  a 
senseless,  stricken,  perspiring,  inconsiderate,  un 
clothed  mass.  I  expected  and  desired  nothing  but 
to  melt  utterly  away  —  and  could  only  treat  my 
nearest  and  dearest  as  if  they  expected  and  desired 
no  more.  I  am  convinced  that  you  all  didn't  and 
that  you  noticed  not  at  all  that  I  had  become  a 
most  ungracious  and  uncommunicative  recipient  of 
your  bounty.  I  lived  from  day  to  day,  most  of 
the  time  in  my  bath,  and  please  tell  your  mother 
that  when  I  thought  of  you  it  was  to  say  to  myself, 
"oh,  they're  all  up  to  their  necks  together  in  their 
Foxhunter  spring,  and  it  would  be  really  indiscreet 
to  break  in  upon  them!"  That  is  how  I  do  trust 
you  have  mainly  spent  your  time — though  in  your 
letter  you're  too  delicate  to  mention  it.  I  was 
caught  as  in  two  or  three  firetraps — I  mean  places 
of  great  and  special  suffering,  as  during  a  week 
at  the  terrific  Intervale,  N.H.,  from  July  1st  to 
8th  or  so  (with  the  kind  Merrimans,  themselves 
Salamanders,  who  served  me  nothing  but  hot  food 
and  expected  clothing;)  but  I  found  a  blest  refuge 
betimes  with  my  kind  old  friend  George  James 
(widower  of  Lily  Lodge,)  at  the  tip  end  of  the 
JSTahant  promontory,  quite  out  at  sea,  where,  amid 
gardens  and  groves  and  on  a  vast  breezy  verandah, 
my  life  was  most  mercifully  saved  and  where  I 
stuck  fast  till  the  very  eve  of  my  sailing.  ...  I 
got  back  here,  myself,  with  a  great  sense  that  it 
was,  quite  desperately,  high  time;  though,  alas,  I 
came  upon  the  same  brassy  sky  and  red-hot  air 
here  as  I  left  behind  me — it  has  been  as  formid 
able  a  summer  here  as  in  the  U.S.  Everything  is 
scorched  and  blighted — my  garden  a  thing  almost 


AET.  68      TO  MISS  ELLEN  EMMET  191 

of  cinders.  There  has  been  no  rain  for  weeks  and 
weeks,  the  thermometer  is  mostly  at  90,  and  still 
it  goes  on.  (90  in  this  thick  English  air  is  like 
100  with  us.)  The  like  was  never  seen,  and  famine- 
threatening  strikes  (at  London  and  Liverpool 
docks,)  with  wars  and  rumours  of  wars  and  the 
smash  of  the  House  of  Lords  and,  as  many  people 
hold,  of  the  constitution,  complete  the  picture  of  a 
distracted  and  afflicted  country.  Nevertheless  I 
shouldn't  mind  it  so  much  if  we  could  only  have 
rain.  Then  I  think  all  troubles  would  end,  or 
mend — and  at  least  I  should  begin  to  find  myself 
again.  I  can't  do  so  yet,  and  am  waiting  to  see 
how  and  where  I  am. 

I  directed  Notman,  of  Boston,  to  send  you  a 
photograph  of  a  little  old — ever  so  ancient — am- 
brotype  lent  me  by  Lilla  Perry  to  have  copied — 
her  husband  T.  S.  P.  having  been  in  obscure  pos 
session  of  it  for  half  a  century.  It  will  at  least 
show  you  where  and  how  I  was  in  about  my  16th 
year.  I  strike  myself  as  such  a  sweet  little  thing 
that  I  want  you,  and  your  mother,  to  see  it  in  order 
to  believe  it — though  she  will  believe  it  more  easily 
than  you.  It  looks  even  a  great  deal  like  her  about 
that  time  too — we  were  always  thought  to  look  a 
little  alike.  .  .  .  My  journey  (voyage)  out  on  the 
big  smooth  swift  Mauretania  gave  me,  and  has  left 
me  with,  such  a  sense  as  of  a  few  hours'  pampered 
ferry,  making  a  mere  mouthful  of  the  waste  of 
waters,  that  I  kind  of  promise  myself  to  come  back 
"all  the  time."  I  had  never  been  so  blandly  just 
lifted  across.  Tell  your  mother  and  Rosina  and 
Leslie  that  I  just  cherish  and  adore  them  all.  I 
cling  to  the  memory  of  all  those  lovely  motor- 
hours;  tell  Leslie  in  particular  how  dear  I  hold 
the  remembrance  of  our  run  together  to  Stock- 
bridge  and  Emily  T.'s  that  wonderful  long  day. 
And  I  had  the  sweetest  passages  with  great  Ro 
sina.  But  I  fold  you  all  together  in  my  arms,  with 


192       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       ion 

Grenville,  please,  well  in  the  thick  of  it,  and  am, 
darling  Bay,  your  most  faithfully  fond  old 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Howard  Sturgis. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

August  17th,  1911. 
Beloved  creature! 

As  if  I  hadn't  mainly  spent  my  time  since 
my  return  here  (a  week  ago  yesterday)  in  writh 
ing  and  squirming  for  very  shame  at  having  left 
your  several,  or  at  least  your  generously  two  or 
three  last,  exquisite  outpourings  unanswered.  But 
I  had  long  before  sailing  from  la-bas,  dearest 
Howard,  and  especially  during  the  final  throes  and 
exhaustions,  been  utterly  overturned  by  the  savage 
heat  and  drought  of  a  summer  that  had  set  in  furi 
ously  the  very  last  of  May,  going  crescendo  all 
that  time — and  of  which  I  am  finding  here  (so  far 
as  the  sky  of  brass  and  the  earth  of  cinders  is  con 
cerned)  so  admirable  an  imitation.  I  have  shown 
you  often  enough,  I  think,  how  much  more  I  have 
in  me  of  the  polar  bear  than  of  the  salamander — 
and  in  fine,  at  the  time  I  last  heard  from  you,  pen, 
ink  and  paper  had  dropped  from  my  perspiring 
grasp  (though  while  in  the  grasp  they  had  never 
felt  more  adhesively  sticky,)  and  I  had  become  a 
mere  prostrate,  panting,  liquefying  mass,  wailing 
to  be  removed.  I  was  removed — at  the  date  I 
mention — pressing  your  supreme  benediction  (in 
the  form  of  eight  sheets  of  lovely  "stamped  pa 
per,"  as  they  say  in  the  U.S.)  to  my  heaving 
bosom;  but  only  to  less  sustaining  and  refreshing 
conditions  than  I  had  hoped  for  here.  You  will 
understand  how  some  of  these — in  this  seamed  and 
cracked  and  blasted  and  distracted  country — strike 
me;  and  perhaps  even  a  little  how  I  seem  to  my- 


AET.  68         TO  HOWARD  STURGIS  193 

self  to  have  been  transferred  simply  from  one 
sizzling  grid-iron  to  another — at  a  time  when  my 
further  toleration  of  grid-irons  had  reached  its 
lowest  ebb.  Such  a  pile  of  waiting  letters  greeted 
me  here — most  of  them  pushing  in  with  an  in 
decency  of  clamour  before  your  dear  delicate  sig 
nal.  But  it  is  always  of  you,  dear  and  delicate 
and  supremely  interesting,  that  I  have  been  think 
ing,  and  here  is  just  a  poor  palpitating  stopgap  of 
a  reply.  Don't  take  it  amiss  of  my  wise  affection 
if  I  tell  you  that  I  am  heartily  glad  you  are  going 
to  Scotland.  Go,  go,  and  stay  as  long  as  you  ever 
can — it's  the  sort  of  thing  exactly  that  will  do  you 
a  world  of  good.  I  am  to  go  there,  I  believe,  next 
month,  to  stay  four  or  five  days  with  John  Cad- 
walader — and  eke  with  Minnie  of  that  ilk  (or  more 
or  less,)  in  Forfarshire — but  that  will  probably  be 
lateish  in  the  month ;  and  before  I  go  you  will  have 
come  back  from  the  Eshers  and  I  have  returned 
from  a  visit  of  a  few  days  which  I  expect  to  embark 
upon  on  Saturday  next.  Then,  when  we  are  gath 
ered  in,  no  power  on  earth  will  prevent  me  from 
throwing  myself  on  your  bosom.  Forgive  mean 
while  the  vulgar  sufficiency  and  banality  of  my 
advice,  above,  as  to  what  will  "do  you  good" — 
loathsome  expression!  But  one  grasps  in  one's 
haste  the  cheapest  current  coin.  I  commend  my 
self  strongly  to  the  gentlest  (no,  that's  not  the 
word — say  the  firmest  even  while  the  fairest)  of 
Williams,  and  am  yours,  dearest  Howard,  ever  so 
yearningly, 

HENRY  JAMES. 

P.S.  I  don't  know  of  course  in  the  least  what 
Esher's  "operation"  may  have  been — but  I  hope 
not  very  grave  and  that  he  is  coming  round  from 
it.  I  should  like  to  be  very  kindly  remembered 
to  her — who  shines  to  me,  from  far  back,  in  so 
amiable  a  light.  .  .  . 


194       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1911 


To  Mrs.  William  James. 

Hill,  Theydon  Mount,  Epping. 

August  27th,  1911. 
Dearest  Alice, 

I  want  to  write  you  while  I  am  here — and 
it  helps  me  (thus  putting  pen  to  paper  does)  to 
conjure  away  the  darkness  of  this  black  anniver 
sary —  just  a  little.  I  have  been  dreading  this 
day — as  I  have  been  living  through  this  week,  as 
you  and  Peg  will  have  done,  and  Bill  not  less, 
under  the  shadow  of  all  the  memories  and  pangs 
of  a  year  ago — but  there  is  a  strange  (strange 
enough!)  kind  of  weak  anodyne  of  association  in 
doing  so  here,  where  thanks  to  your  support  and 
unspeakable  charity,  utterly  and  entirely,  I  got 
sufficiently  better  of  my  own  then  deadly  visita 
tion  of  misery  to  struggle  with  you  on  to  Nau- 
heim.  I  met  here  at  first  on  coming  down  a 
week — nine  days — ago  (quite  fleeing  from  the  hot 
and  blighted  Rye)  the  assault  of  all  that  miserable 
and  yet  in  a  way  helpful  vision — but  have  since 
been  very  glad  I  came,  just  as  I  am  glad  that 
you  were  here  then — in  spite  of  everything.  .  .  . 
I  am  adding  day  to  day  here,  as  you  see — partly 
because  it  helps  to  tide  me  over  a  bad — not  physi 
cally  bad — time,  and  partly  because  my  admirable 
and  more  than  ever  wonderful  hostess  puts  it  so  as 
a  favour  to  her  that  I  do,  that  I  can  only  oblige 
her  in  memory  of  all  her  great  goodness  to  us — 
when  it  did  make  such  a  difference — of  May  1910. 
So  I  daresay  I  shall  stay  on  for  ten  or  twelve  days 
more  (I  don't  want  to  stir,  for  one  thing,  till  we 
have  had  some  relief  by  water.  It  has  now  rained 
in  some  places,  but  there  has  fallen  as  yet  no  drop 
here  or  hereabouts — and  the  earth  is  sickening  to 
behold.)  I  have  my  old  room — and  I  have  paid 
a  visit  to  yours — which  is  empty.  .  .  .  Mrs.  Swyn- 


AET.GS    TO  MRS.  WILLIAM  JAMES         195 

nerton  is  doing  an  historical  picture  for  a  decora 
tive  competition — the  embellishment  of  the  Chel 
sea  Town  Hall,  I  believe:  Queen  Elizabeth  taking 
refuge  (at  Chelsea)  under  an  oak  during  a  thun 
der-storm,  and  she  finds  the  great  oak  here  and 
Mrs.  Hunter,  in  a  wonderful  Tudor  dress  and 
headgear  and  red  wig,  to  be  admirably,  though  too 
beautifully,  the  Queen:  with  the  big  canvas  set  up, 
out  of  doors,  by  the  tree,  where  her  marvellous 
model  still  finds  time,  on  top  of  everything,  to 
pose,  hooped  and  ruffled  and  decorated,  and  in  a 
most  trying  queenly  position.  Mrs.  S.  is  also  do 
ing — finishing — the  portrait  of  me  that  she  pushed 
on  so  last  year. 

.  .  .  But  goodbye,  dearest  Alice,  dearest  all. 
"hope  your  Mother  is  with  you  and  that  Harry  has 
begun  to  take  his  holiday — bless  him.    I  bless  your 
Mother  too   and  send  her  my   affectionate  love. 
Goodbye,  dearest  Alice.    Your  all  faithful 

HENRY. 


To  Mrs.  John  L.  Gardner. 

Hill,  Theydon  Mount,  Epping. 
September  3rd,  1911. 

Dearest  Isabella  Gardner, 

Yes,  it  has  been  abominable,  my  silence 
since  I  last  heard  from  you — so  kindly  and  beauti 
fully  and  touchingly — during  those  few  last  flur 
ried  and  worried  days  before  I  left  America. 
They  were  very  difficult,  they  were  very  deadly 
days:  I  was  ill  with  the  heat  and  the  tension  and 
the  trouble,  and,  amid  all  the  things  to  be  done  for 
the  wind-up  of  a  year's  stay,  I  allowed  myself  to 
defer  the  great  pleasure  of  answering  you,  yet  the 
general  pain  of  taking  leave  of  you,  to  some  such 
supposedly  calmer  hour  as  this.  ...  I  fled  away 
from  my  little  south  coast  habitation  a  very  few 


196       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1911 

days  after  reaching  it — by  reason  of  the  brassy  sky, 
the  shadeless  glare  and  the  baked  and  barren  earth, 
and  took  refuge  among  these  supposedly  dense 
shades — yet  where  also  all  summer  no  drop  of  rain 
has  fallen.  There  is  less  of  a  glare  nevertheless, 
and  more  of  the  cooling  motor-car,  and  a  very  vast 
and  beautiful  old  William  and  Mary  (and  older) 
house  of  a  very  interesting  and  delightful  charac 
ter,  which  has  lately  come  into  possession  of  an 
admirable  friend  of  mine,  ^Mrs-Charles  JSunter, 
who  tells  me  that  she  happily  knows  you  and  that 
you  were  very  kind  and  helpful  to  her  during  a 
short  visit  she  made  a  few  (or  several)  years  ago 
to  America.  It  is  a  splendid  old  house  —  and 
though,  in  the  midst  of  Epping  Forest,  it  is  but  a 
ninety  minutes'  motor-ride  from  London,  it's  as 
sequestered  and  woodlanded  as  if  it  were  much 
deeper  in  the  country.  And  there  are  innumerable 
other  interesting  old  places  about,  and  such  old- 
world  nooks  and  corners  and  felicities  as  make  one 
feel  (in  the  thick  of  revolution)  that  anything  that 
"happens" — happens  disturbingly — to  this  wonder 
ful  little  attaching  old  England,  the  ripest  fruit 
of  time,  can  only  be  a  change  for  the  worse. 
Even  the  North  Shore  and  its  rich  wild  beauty 
fades  by  comparison — even  East  Gloucester  and 
Cecilia's  clamorous  little  bower  make  a  less  ex 
quisite  harmony.  Nevertheless,  I  think  tenderly 
even  of  that  bustling  desert  now — such  is  the  magic 
of  fond  association.  George  James's  shelter  of  me 
in  his  seaward  fastness  during  those  else  insuffer 
able  weeks  was  a  mercy  I  can  never  forget,  and 
my  beautiful  day  with  you  from  Lynn  on  and  on, 
to  the  lovely  climax  above-mentioned,  is  a  cherished 
treasure  of  memory.  I  water  this  last  sweet  with 
ered  flower  in  particular  with  tears  of  regret — that 
we  mightn't  have  had  more  of  them.  I  hope  your 
month  of  August  has  gone  gently  and  reasonably 
and  that  you  have  continued  to  be  able  to  put  it  in 


AET.  68    TO  MRS.  JOHN  L.  GARDNER      197 

by  the  sea.  I  found  the  salt  breath  of  that  element 
gave  the  only  savour — or  the  main  one — that  my 
consciousness  knew  at  those  bad  times ;  and  if  you 
cultivated  it  duly  and  cultivated  sweet  peace,  into 
the  bargain,  as  hard  as  ever  you  could,  I'll  engage 
that  you're  better  now — and  will  continue  so  if 
you'll  only  really  take  your  unassailable  stand  on 
sweet  peace.  You  will  find  in  the  depth  of  your 
admirable  nature  more  genius  and  vocation  for  it 
than  you  have  ever  let  yourself  find  out — and  I 
hereby  give  you  my  blessing  on  your  now  splendid 
exploitation  of  that  hitherto  least  attended-to  of 
your  many  gardens.  Become  rich  in  indifference— 
to  almost  everything  but  your  fondly  faithful  old 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

By   "Her"   is   meant   Mrs.   Wharton's   motor,   always 
referred  to  by  the  chauffeur  as  "she." 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

Sept.  27th,  1911. 
Dearest  Edith, 

Alas  it  is  not  possible — it  is  not  even  for 
a  moment  thinkable.  I  returned,  practically,  but 
last  night  to  my  long-abandoned  home,  where  every 
earthly  consideration,  and  every  desire  of  my  heart, 
conspires  now  to  fix  me  in  some  sort  of  recovered 
peace  and  stability;  I  cling  to  its  very  doorposts, 
for  which  I  have  yearned  for  long  months,  and  the 
idea  of  going  forth  again  on  new  and  distant  and 
expensive  adventure  fills  me  with — let  me  frankly 
say — absolute  terror  and  dismay — the  desire,  the 
frantic  impulse  of  scared  childhood,  to  plunge  my 
head  under  the  bedclothes  and  burrow  there,  not 
to  "let  it  (i.e.  Her  I)  get  me!"  In  fine  I  want  as 
little  to  renew  the  junketings  and  squanderings  of 


198       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1911 

exile — time,  priceless  time-squanderings  as  they 
are  for  me  now — as  I  want  devoutly  much  to  do 
something  very  different,  to  which  I  must  begin 
immediately  to  address  myself — and  even  if  my 
desire  were  intense  indeed  there  would  be  gross 
difficulties  for  me  to  overcome.  But  enough — don't 
let  me  pile  up  the  agony  of  the  ungracious — as  any 
failure  of  response  to  a  magnificent  invitation  can 
only  be.  Let  me  simply  gape  all  admiringly,  from 
a  distance,  at  the  splendour  of  your  own  spirit  and 
general  resources — or  rather  let  me  just  simply 
stay  my  pen  and  hide  my  head  (under  the  bed 
clothes  before  -  mentioned. )  My  finest  deepest 
sense  of  the  general  matter  is  that  the  whole  econ 
omy  of  my  future  (in  which  I  see  myself  reviving 
again  to  certain  things,  very  definite  things,  that 
I  want  to  do)  absolutely  lays  an  interdict  (to 
which  I  oh  so  fondly  bow!)  on  my  ever  leaving 
these  shores  again.  And  I  have  no  scruple  of  say 
ing  this  to  you — your  beautiful  genius  being  so  for 
great  globe-adventures  and  putting  girdles  round 
the  earth.  Mine  is,  incomparably,  for  brooding  like 
the  Hen,  whom  I  differ  from  but  by  a  syllable  in 
designation;  and  see  how  little  I  personally  lose  by 
it,  since  your  putting  on  girdles  so  quite  inevitably 
involves  your  passing  at  a  given  moment  where 
I  can  reach  forth  and  grab  you  a  little.  Don't 
despise  me  for  a  spiritless  worm,  only  livrez-vous-y 
yourself  .  .  .  with  all  pride  and  power,  and  unroll 
the  rich  record  later  to  your  so  inevitably  deprived 
(though  so  basely  resigned)  and  always  so  faith 
fully  fond  old 

HENRY  JAMES. 


AET.  68    TO  MRS.  WILFRED  SHERIDAN     199 


To  Mrs.  Wilfred  Sheridan. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

Oct.  2nd,  1911. 
Dear  incomparable  Child  1 

What  is  one  to  do,  how  is  your  poor  old 
battered  and  tattered  ex  -  neighbour  above  all  to 
demean  himself  in  the  glittering  presence  of  such 
a  letter?  Yes,  I  have — through  the  force  of  dire 
accidents — treated  you  to  the  most  confused  and 
aching  void  that  could  pretend  to  pass  for  the  mere 
ghost  of  conversability,  and  yet  you  shine  upon  me 
still  with  your  own  sole  light — the  absolute  dazzle 
of  which  very  naturally  brings  tears  to  my  eyes. 
You  are  a  monster — or  almost! — of  magnanimity, 
as  well  as  beauty  and  ability  and  (above  all,  clear 
ly)  of  felicity,  and  there  is  nothing  for  me,  I  quite 
recognise,  but  to  collapse  and  grovel.  Behold  me 
before  you  worm-like  therefore  —  a  pretty  pon 
derous  worm,  but  still  capable  of  the  quiver  of 
sensibility  and  quite  inoffensively  transportable— 
whether  by  motor-car  or  train,  or  the  local,  frugal 
fly.  There  is  an  almost  incredible  kindness  for  me 
in  your  and  Wilfred's  being  prepared  literally  to 
harbour  and  nourish,  to  exhibit  on  your  bright 
scene,  publicly  and  all  incongruously,  so  aged  and 
dingy  a  parasite;  but  a  real  big  breezy  happiness 
sometimes  begets,  I  know,  a  regular  wantonness 
of  charity,  a  fond  extravagance  of  altruism,  and  I 
surrender  myself  to  the  wild  experiment  with  the 
very  most  pious  hope  that  you  won't  repent  of  it. 
You  shall  not  at  any  point,  I  promise  you,  if  the 
effort  on  my  part  decently  to  grace  the  splendid 
situation  can  possibly  stave  it  off.  I  will  bravely 
come  then  on  Friday  27th — arriving,  in  the  after 
noon,  by  any  conveyance  that  you  are  so  good  as 
to  instruct  me  to  adopt.  And  even  as  the  earth 
worm  might  aspire — occasion  offering — to  mate 


£00       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1911 

with  the  silkworm,  I  will  gladly  arrange  with  dear 
glossy  Howard  to  present  myself  if  possible  in  Ms 
company.  I  rejoice  in  your  offering  me  that  cher 
ished  company,  there  is  a  rare  felicity  in  it:  for 
Howard  is  the  person  in  all  the  world  who  is  kind 
est  to  me  next  after  you.  I  shall  rejoice  to  see  Wil 
fred  again,  and  be  particularly  delighted  to  see 
him  as  my  host;  our  acquaintance  began  a  long 
time  ago,  but  seemed  till  now  to  have  been  blighted 
by  adversity.  This  splendidly  makes  up — and  all 
the  good  I  thought  of  him  is  confirmed  for  me  by 
his  thinking  so  much  good  of  you.  It  will  thrill  me 
likewise  to  see  your  bower  of  bliss — a  fester  Burg 
in  a  distracted  world  just  now,  and  where  I  pray 
that  good  understandings  shall  ever  hold  their  own. 
It  mustn't  be  difficult  to  be  happy  with  you  and 
by  you,  dear  Clare,  and  you  will  see  how  I,  for  my 
permitted  part,  shall  pull  it  off.  I  was  lately  very 
happy  in  Scotland — happy  for  me,  and  for  Scot 
land  ! — and  it  must  have  been  something  to  do  with 
the  fact  that  (I  being  in  Forfarshire)  you  were, 
or  were  even  about  to  be,  though  unknown  to  me, 
in  the  neighbouring  county.  This  created  an  at 
mosphere — over  and  above  the  bonny  Scotch;  I 
kind  of  sniffed  your  great  geniality — from  afar;  so 
you  see  the  kind  of  good  you  can't  help  doing  me. 
It's  rapture  to  think  that  you'll  do  me  yet  more — 
at  closer  quarters,  and  I  am  yours,  my  dear  Clare, 
all  affectionately, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


AET.  68    TO  MISS  ALICE  RUNNELLS         201 


To  Miss  Alice  Runnells. 

H.  J.'s  nephew  William,  his  brother's  second  son,  had 
just  become  engaged  to  Miss  Runnells. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

Oct.  4th,  1911. 
My  very  dear  Niece, 

I  must  tell  you  at  once  all  the  pleasure  your 
beautiful  and  generous  letter  of  the  23rd  Septem 
ber  has  given  me.  It's  a  genuine  joy  to  have  from 
you  so  straight  the  delightful  truth  of  the  whole 
matter,  and  I  can't  thank  you  enough  for  talking 
to  me  with  an  exquisite  young  confidence  and  treat 
ing  me  as  the  fond  and  faithful  and  intensely  par 
ticipating  old  uncle  that  I  want  to  be.  It  makes 
me  feel — all  you  say — how  right  I've  been  to  be 
glad,  and  how  righter  still  I  shall  be  to  be  myself 
confident.  How  shall  I  tell  you  in  return  what 
an  interest  I  am  going  to  take  in  you — and  how  I 
want  you  to  multiply  for  me  the  occasions  of  show 
ing  it?  You  see  I  take  the  greatest  and  tenderest 
interest  in  Bill — and  you  and  I  feel  then  exactly 
together  about  that.  We  shall  do — always  more 
or  less  together! — everything  we  can  think  of  to 
help  him  and  back  him  up,  and  we  shall  find  noth 
ing  more  interesting  and  more  paying.  I  expect 
somehow  or  other  to  see  a  great  deal  of  him — and 
of  you;  and  count  on  you  to  bring  him  out  to  me 
on  the  very  first  pretext,  and  on  him  to  bring  you. 
He  is  splendidly  serious  and  entier;  it's  a  great 
thing  to  be  as  entier  as  that.  And  he  has  great 
ability,  great  possibilities,  which  will  take,  and  so 
much  reward,  all  the  bringing  out  and  wooing  forth 
and  caring  and  looking  out  for  that  we  can  give 
them — as  faith  and  affection  can  do  these  things; 
though  of  a  certainty  they  would  go  their  own  way 
in  spite  of  us — the  fine  powers  would — if,  unluckily 


202       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1911 

for  us,  they  didn't  appeal  to  us.  I  like  to  think  of 
you  working  out  your  ideas — planning  all  those 
possibilities  together — in  the  wondrous  Chocorua 
October  —  where  I  hope  you  are  staying  to  the 
end — and  even  if  intensity  at  the  studio  naturally 
suffers  for  the  time  it  has  only  fallen  back  a  little 
to  gather  again  for  the  spring.  I  mean  in  par 
ticular  the  intensity  of  which  you  were  the  subject 
and  centre,  and  which  must  have  at  first  been  some 
what  hampered  by  its  own  very  excess.  Bill's  only 
danger  is  in  his  tendency  to  be  intensely  intense — 
which  is  a  bit  of  a  waste;  if  one  is  intense  (and  it's 
the  only  thing  for  an  artist  to  be)  one  should  be 
economically,  that  is  carelessly  and  cynically  so :  in 
that  way  one  limits  the  conditions  and  tangles  of 
one's  problem.  But  don't  give  Bill  this  for  a  speci 
men  of  the  way  you  and  I  are  going  to  pull  him 
through:  we  shall  do  much  better  yet — only  it's 
past,  far  past,  midnight  and  the  deep  hush  of  the 
little  old  sleeping  town  suggests  bed-time  rather 
as  the  great  question  for  the  moment.  I  have  come 
back  to  this  admirable  small  corner  with  great  joy 
and  profit — and  oh,  dear  Alice,  how  earnestly  you 
are  awaited  here  at  some  not  really  distant  hour 
by  your  affectionate  old  uncle, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  Frederic  Harrison. 

The  "small  fiction"   sent   to   Mrs.   Harrison  was   The 
Outcry. 

Reform  Club,  Pall  Mall,  S.W. 

Oct.  19,  1911. 
Dear  Mrs.  Harrison, 

I  am  more  touched  than  I  can  say  by  your 
gentle  and  generous  acknowledgment  of  the  poor 
little  sign  of  contrition  and  apology  (in  the  shape 
of  a  slight  offered  beguilement)  that  referred  to 


AET.  08  TO  MRS.  FREDERIC  HARRISON  203 

my  graceless  silence  after  the  receipt  of  a  beautiful 
word  of  sympathy  in  a  great  sorrow  months  and 
months  ago — I  am  ashamed  to  remind  you  of  how 
many!  You  now  heap  coals  of  fire,  as  the  phrase 
is,  on  my  head — and  I  can  scarcely  bear  it,  for  the 
pure  crushing  sense  of  your  goodness.  I  was  in 
truth,  at  the  time  of  your  other  letter,  deeply  sub 
merged — at  once  horribly  bereft  and  very  ill  physi 
cally,  but  I  was  really  almost  as  much  touched  by 
the  kindness  of  which  yours  was  a  part  as  I  was 
either.  Only  I  was  unable  to  do  anything  at  the 
time  in  the  way  of  recognition — at  the  time  or  for 
a  long  while  afterwards;  and  when  at  last  I  did 
begin  to  emerge  —  after  a  very  difficult  year  in 
America  which  came  to  an  end  only  two  months 
ago,  my  very  indebtednesses  were  paralysing — my 
long  silence  required,  to  my  sore  sense,  so  much 
explanation.  However,  I  have  little  by  little 
explained — to  some  friends ;  though  I  think  not  to 
those  I  count  as  closest — for  such,  one  feels,  are 
the  best  comprehenders,  without  one's  having  to  tell 
too  much. 

I  am  in  town,  you  see — not  at  Rye,  having  gone 
back  there  definitely,  three  weeks  ago,  to  the  ques 
tionable  experiment  of  taking  up  my  abode  there 
for  the  season  to  come.  The  experiment  broke 
down — I  can  no  longer  stand  the  solitude  and  con 
finement,  the  immobilisation,  of  that  contracted 
corner  in  these  shortening  and  darkening  weeks 
and  months.  These  things  have  the  worst  effect 
upon  me — and  I  fled  to  London  pavements,  lamp 
lights,  shop  fronts,  taxi's — and  friends;  amid  all  of 
which  I  have  recovered  my  equilibrium  excellently, 
and  shall  do  so  still  more.  It  means  definitely  for 
me  no  more  winters  at  rueful  Rye — only  summers, 
though  I  hope  plenty  of  them.  I  go  down  there, 
however,  for  bits,  to  keep  my  small  household  to 
gether — I  can't  yet,  or  till  I  arrange  some  frugal 
footing,  bring  it  up  here;  and  I  shall  be  delighted 


, 


204       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1911 

to  profit  by  one  of  those  occasions  to  seek  your 
hospitality  in  a  neighbourly  way  for  a  couple  of 
nights.  I  shall  be  eager  for  this,  and  will  com 
municate  with  you  as  soon  as  the  opportunity 
seems  to  glimmer.  Please  express  to  Frederic 
Harrison  my  hearty  participation,  by  sympathy 
and  sense,  in  all  the  fine  things  that  are  now  so 
handsomely  happening  to  him;  he  is  a  splendid 
example  and  incitement  (excitement  in  fact)  for 
those  climbing  the  great  hill — the  hill  of  the  long 
faith  and  the  stout  staff — just  after  him,  and  who 
see  him  so  little  spent  and  so  erect  against  the  sky 
at  the  top.  We  see  you  with  him,  dear  Mrs.  Harri 
son,  making  scarcely  less  brave  a  figure — at  least 
to  your  very  faithful  old  friend, 

HENRY  JAMES. 

P.S.    I  have  it  at  heart  to  mention  that  my  small 
fiction  was  written  two  years  ago — in  1909. 


To  Miss  Theodora  Bosanquet. 

On  this   appeal  Miss   Bosanquet,   H.   J.'s   amanuensis, 
secured  rooms  for  him  in  Lawrence  Street,  Chelsea. 

105  Pall  Mall,  S.W. 
October  27th,  1911. 

Dear  Miss  Bosanquet, 

Oh  if  you  could  only  have  the  real  right 
thing  to  miraculously  propose  to  me,  you  and  Miss 
Bradley,  when  I  see  you  on  Tuesday  at  4.30!  For 
you  see,  by  this  bolting  in  horror  and  loathing  (but 
don't  repeat  those  expressions!)  from  Rye  for  the 
winter,  my  situation  suddenly  becomes  special  and 
difficult;  and  largely  through  this,  that  having  got 
back  to  work  and  to  a  very  particular  job,  the  need 
of  expressing  myself,  of  pushing  it  on,  on  the  old 


AET.  68  TO  MISS  THEODORA  BOSANQTJET  205 

Remingtonese  terms,  grows  daily  stronger  within 
me.  But  I  haven't  a  seat  and  temple  for  the  Rem 
ington  and  its  priestess — can't  have  here  at  this 
club,  and  on  the  other  hand  can't  now  organize  a 
permanent  or  regular  and  continuous  footing  for 
the  London  winter,  which  means  something  un 
furnished  and  taking  (wasting,  now)  time  and 
thought.  I  want  a  small,  very  cheap  and  very 
clean  furnished  flat  or  trio  of  rooms  etc.  (like  the 
one  we  talked  of  under  the  King's  Cross  delusion- 
only  better  and  with  some,  a  very  few,  tables  and 
chairs  and  fireplaces,)  that  I  could  hire  for  2  or 
3 — 3  or  4 — months  to  drive  ahead  my  job  in — the 
Remington  priestess  and  I  converging  and  meet 
ing  there  morning  by  morning — and  it  being 
preferably  nearer  to  her  than  to  me;  though  near 
tubes  and  things  for  both  of  us!  I  must  keep  on 
this  place  for  food  and  bed  etc. — I  have  it  by  the 
year — till  I  really  have  something  else  by  the  year 
—for  winter  purposes  —  to  supersede  it  (Lamb 
House  abides,  for  long  summers. )  Your  researches 
can  have  only  been  for  the  ^^furnished — but  look, 
think,  invent  I  Two  or  three  decent  little  tabled 
and  chaired  and  lighted  rooms  would  do.  I  catch 
a  train  till  Monday,  probably  late.  But  on  Tues 
day! 

Yours  ever, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  William  James. 

The  book  on   which   H.   J.   was   now   at  work   was   A 
Small  Boy  and  Others. 

The  Athenaeum,  Pall  Mall,  S.W. 

Nov.  13th,  1911. 
Dearest  Alice, 

I  must  bless  you  on  the  spot  for  your  dear 
letter  of  the  22nd — continued  on  the  31st.    I  clutch 


206       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1911 

so  at  everything  that  concerns  and  emanates  from 
you  all  that  I  kind  of  pine  for  the  need  of  it  all  the 
while — or  at  any  rate  am  immensely  and  positively 
bettered  by  every  scrap  of  the  dear  old  Library  life 
that  you  can  manage  to  waft  over  to  me.  ...  I 
find,  naturally,  that  I  can  think  of  you  all,  and 
mingle  with  you  so,  ever  so  much  more  vividly  than 
I  could  of  old — through  the  effect  of  all  those 
weeks  and  months  of  last  year — which  have  had  at 
any  rate  that  happy  result,  that  I  have  the  con 
stant  image  of  your  days  and  doings.  You  must 
/  think  now  very  cheerfully  and  relievedly  of  mine — 
because  distinctly,  yes,  dear  brave  old  London  is 
working  my  cure.  The  conditions  here  were  what 
I  needed  all  the  while  that  I  was  so  far  away  from 
them — I  mean  because  they  are  of  the  kind  ma 
terially  best  addressed  to  helping  me  to  work  my 
way  back  to  an  equilibrium.  ...  I  shall  see  how 
it  works — from  10.30  to  1.30  each  day — and  let 
you  hear  more ;  but  it  represents  the  yearning  effort 
really  to  get,  more  surely  and  swiftly  now,  up  to 
my  neck  into  the  book  about  William  and  the  rest 
of  us.  I  have  written  to  Harry  to  ask  him  for  cer 
tain  of  the  young,  youthful  letters  (copies  of 
them)  which  I  didn't  bring  away  with  me — on  the 
other  hand  I  have  found  some  six  or  eight  very 
precious  ones  mixed  up  with  the  mass  of  Father's 
that  I  have  with  me  (thrust  into  Father's  envel 
opes  etc.)  Of  Father's,  alas,  very  few  are  useable; 
they  are  so  intensely  domestic,  private  and  per 
sonal. 

November  19th.  I  find  with  horror,  dearest 
Alice,  that  I  have  inadvertently  left  this  all  these 
days  in  my  portfolio  (interrupted  where  I  broke  off 
above,)  under  the  impression  that  I  had  finished 
and  posted  it.  This  is  dreadful,  and  I  am  afraid 
shows  how  the  beneficent  London,  for  all  its  benefi 
cence,  does  interpose,  invade  and  distract,  giving 
one  too  many  things  to  do  and  to  bear  in  mind  at 


AET.  68     TO  MRS.  WILLIAM  JAMES          207 

once.  What  sickened  me  is  that  I  have  thus  kept 
my  letter  over  a  whole  wasted  week — so  far  as  being 
in  touch  with  you  all  is  concerned.  On  the  other 
hand  this  lapse  of  time  enables  me  blessedly  to  con 
firm,  in  the  light  of  further  experience,  whatever 
of  good  and  hopeful  the  beginning  of  the  present 
states  to  you.  .  .  . 

In  the  third  place  a  most  valued  letter  from 
Harry  has  come,  accompanying  a  packet  of  more 
of  William's  letters  typed,  for  which  I  heartily 
thank  him,  and  promising  me  some  others  yet.  I 
am  writing  to  him  in  a  very  few  days,  and  will  then 
tell  him  how  I  am  entirely  at  one  with  him  about 
the  kind  of  use  to  be  made  by  me  of  all  these  early 
things,  the  kind  of  setting  they  must  have,  the 
kind  of  encompassment  that  the  book,  as  my  book, 
my  play  of  reminiscence  and  almost  of  brotherly 
autobiography,  and  filial  autobiography  not  less, 
must  enshrine  them  in.  The  book  I  see  and  feel 
will  be  difficult  and  unprecedented  and  perilous — 
but  if  I  bring  it  off  it  will  be  exquisite  and  unique ; 
bring  it  off  as  I  inwardly  project  it  and  oh  so 
devoutly  desire  it.  I  greatly  regret  only,  also, 
the  almost  complete  absence  of  letters  from  Alice. 
She  clearly  destroyed  after  Father's  death  all  the 
letters  she  had  written  to  them — him  and  Mother- 
in  absence,  and  this  was  natural  enough.  But  it 
leaves  a  perfect  blank — though  there  are  on  the 
other  hand  all  my  own  intimate  memories.  Could 
you  see — ask — if  Fanny  Morse  has  kept  any?  that 
is  just  possible.  She  wrote  after  all  so  little.  I 
marvel  that  I  have  none — during  the  Cambridge 
years.  But  she  was  so  ill  that  writing  was  rare  for 
her — very  rare.  However,  I  must  end  this.  I  hope 
the  Irving  St.  winter  wears  a  friendly  face  for  you. 
I  think  so  gratefully  and  kindly  now  of  the  little 
chintzy  parlour — blest  refuge.  I  re-embrace  dear 
est  Peg  and  I  do  so  want  some  demonstration  of 
what  Aleck  is  doing.  It's  a  pang  to  hear  from  you 


208       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1011 

that  he  "isn't  so  well  physically."  What  does  that 
sadly  mean?  I  send  him  all  my  love  and  to  your 
mother.  Ever  your 

HENRY. 


To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

Reform  Club,  Pall  Mall,  S.W. 

Nov.  19th,  1911. 
Dearest  Edith, 

There  are  scarce  degrees  of  difference  in  my 
constant  need  of  hearing  from  you,  yet  when  that 
felicity  comes  it  manages  each  time  to  seem  pre 
eminent  and  to  have  assuaged  an  exceptional  hun 
ger.  The  pleasure  and  relief,  at  any  rate,  three 
days  since,  were  of  the  rarest  quality — and  it's  al 
ways  least  discouraging  ( for  the  exchange  of  senti 
ments)  to  know  that  your  wings  are  for  the  moment 
folded  and  your  field  a  bit  delimited.  I  knew  you 
were  back  in  Paris  as  an  informer  passing  hereby 
on  his  way  thence  again  to  N.Y.  had  seen  you  din 
ing  at  the  Ritz  en  nombreuse  compagnie,  "looking 
awfully  handsome  and  stunningly  dressed."  And 
Mary  Hunter  cesjours-ci  had  given  me  earlier  and 
more  exotic  news  of  you,  yet  coloured  with  a  great 
vividness  of  sympathy  and  admiration.  .  .  .  But 
I  feel  that  it  takes  a  hard  assurance  to  speak  to 
you  of  "arriving"  anywhere — as  that  implies  start 
ing  and  continuing,  and  before  your  great  heroic 
rushes  and  revolutions  I  can  only  gape  and  sigh 
and  sink  back.  It  requires  an  association  of  ease — 
with  the  whole  heroic  question  (of  the  "up  and 
doing"  state) — which  I  don't  possess,  to  presume 
to  suggestionise  on  the  subject  of  a  new  advent. 
Great 'will  be  the  glory  and  joy,  and  the  rushing  to 
and  fro,  when  the  wide  wings  are  able,  marvellously, 
to  show  us  symptoms  of  spreading  again — and  here 
I  am  (mainly  here  this  winter)  to  thrill  with  the 


AET.  68  TO  MRS.  WHARTON  209 

first  announcement.  London  is  better  for  me,  dur 
ing  these  months,  than  any  other  spot  of  earth,  or 
of  pavement;  and  even  here  I  seem  to  find  I 
can  work — and  n'ai  pas  maintenant  d'autre  idee. 
Apropos  of  which  aid  to  life  your  remarks  about 
my  small  latest-born  are  absolutely  to  the  point. 
The  little  creature  is  absolutely  of  the  irresistible 
sex  of  her  most  intelligent  critic — for  I  don't  pre 
tend,  like  Lady  Macbeth,  to  bring  forth  men-chil 
dren  only.  You  speak  at  your  ease,  chere  Madame, 
of  the  interminable  and  formidable  job  of  my  pro-  v 
ducing  a  mon  age  another  Golden  Bowl — the  most 
arduous  and  thankless  task  I  ever  set  myself. 
However,  on  all  that  il  y  aurait  bien  des  choses  a 
dire;  and  meanwhile,  I  blush  to  say,  the  Outcry  is 
on  its  way  to  a  fifth  edition  (in  these  few  weeks), 
whereas  it  has  taken  the  poor  old  G.B.  eight  or 
nine  years  to  get  even  into  a  third.  And  I  should 
have  to  go  back  and  live  for  two  continuous  years 
at  Lamb  House  to  write  it  (living  on  dried  herbs 
and  cold  water  —  for  "staying  power"  —  mean 
while;)  and  that  would  be  very  bad  for  me,  would 
probably  indeed  put  an  end  to  me  altogether.  My 
own  sense  is  that  I  don't  want,  and  oughtn't  to  try, 
to  attack  ever  again  anything  longer  (save  for 
about  70  or  80  pages  more)  than  the  Outcry.  That 
is  deja  assez  difficile — the  "artistic  economy"  of 
that  inferior  little  product  being  a  much  more 
calculated  and  ciphered,  much  more  cunning  and 
(to  use  your  sweet  expression)  crafty  one  than  that 
of  five  G.B.'s.  The  vague  verbosity  of  the  Oxus- 
flood  (beau  nom!)  terrifies  me — sates  me;  whereas 
the  steel  structure  of  the  other  form  makes  every 
parcelle  a  weighed  and  related  value.  Moreover 
nobody  is  really  doing  (or,  ce  me  semble,  as  I  look 
about,  can  do)  Outcries,  while  all  the  world  is  doing 
G.B.'s — and  vous-meme,  chere  Madame,  tout  le 
premier:  which  gives  you  really  the  cat  out  of  the 
bag!  My  vanity  forbids  me  (instead  of  the  more 


210       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1011 

sweetly  consecrating  it)  a  form  in  which  you  run 
me  so  close.  Seulement  alors  je  compterais  batir 
a  great  many  (a  great  many,  entendezvous?)  Out 
cries — and  on  donnees  autrement  rich.  About  this 
present  one  hangs  the  inferiority,  the  comparative 
triviality,  of  its  primal  origin.  But  pardon  this 
x  flood  of  professional  egotism.  I  have  in  any  case 
^y  got  back  to  work — on  something  that  now  the  more 
urgently  occupies  me  as  the  time  for  me  circum 
stantially  to  have  done  it  would  have  been  last  win 
ter,  when  I  was  insuperably  unfit  for  it,  and  that  is 
extremely  special,  experimental  and  as  yet  occult. 
I  apply  myself  to  my  effort  every  morning  at  a 
little  repaire  in  the  depths  of  Chelsea,  a  couple  of 
little  rooms  that  I  have  secured  for  quiet  and  con 
centration — to  which  our  blest  taxi  whirls  me  from 
hence  every  morning  at  10  o'clock,  and  where  I 
meet  my  amanuensis  (of  the  days  of  the  com 
position  of  the  G.B.)  to  whom  I  gueuler  to  the  best 
of  my  power.  In  said  repaire  I  propose  to  crouch 
and  me  blottir  (in  the  English  shade  of  the  word, 
for  so  intensely  revising  an  animal,  as  well)  for 
many,  many  weeks;  so  that  I  fear  dearest  Edith, 
your  idea  of  "whirling  me  away"  will  have  to  adapt 
itself  to  the  sense  worn  by  "away" — as  it  clearly  so 
gracefully  will!  For  there  are  senses  in  which  that 
particle  is  for  me  just  the  most  obnoxious  little 
object  in  the  language.  Make  your  fond  use  of  it 
at  any  rate  by  first  coming  away — away  hither.  .  . 
Yours  all  and  always, 

HENRY  JAMES. 

P.S.  This  was  begun  five  days  ago — and  was 
raggedly  and  ruthlessly  broken  off — had  to  be — 
and  I  didn't  mark  the  place  this  Sunday  a.m.  where 
I  took  it  up  again — on  page  6th.  But  I  put  only 
today's  date — as  I  didn't  put  the  other  day's  at  the 
time. 


AET.  68  TO   W.   E.    NORRIS 


To  W.  E.  Norris. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

January  5th,  1912. 
My  dear  Norris, 

I  don't  know  whether  to  call  this  a  belated 
or  a  premature  thing;  as  "a  New  Year's  offering" 
(and  my  hand  is  tremendously  in  for  those  just 
now,  though  it  is  also  tremendously  fatigued)  it  is 
a  bit  behind;  whereas  for  an  independent  overture 
it  follows  perhaps  indiscreetly  fast  on  the  heels  of 
my  Christmas  letter.  However,  as  since  this  last 
I  have  had  the  promptest  and  most  beautiful  one 
from  you — a  miracle  of  the  perfect  "fist"  as  well  as 
of  the  perfect  ease  and  grace — I  make  bold  to  feel 
that  I  am  not  quite  untimely,  that  you  won't  find 
me  so,  and  I  offer  you  still  all  the  compliments  of 
the  Season — sated  and  gorged  as  you  must  by  this 
time  be  with  them  and  vague  thin  sustenance  as 
they  at  best  afford.  If  I  hadn't  already  in  the 
course  of  the  several  score  of  letters  which  had  long 
weighed  on  me  and  which  I  really  retired  to  this 
place  on  Dec.  30th  to  work  off  as  much  as  anything 
else,  run  into  the  ground  the  image  of  the  coming 
year  as  the  grim,  veiled,  equivocal  and  sinister  fig 
ure  who  holds  us  all  in  his  dread  hand  and  whom 
we  must  therefore  grovel  and  abase  ourselves  at 
once  on  the  threshold  of,  as  to  curry  favour  with 
him,  I  would  give  you  the  full  benefit  of  it — but  I 
leave  it  there  as  it  is ;  though  if  you  do  wish  to  crawl 
beside  me,  here  I  am  flat  on  my  face.  I  am  putting 
in  a  few  more  days  here — in  order  to  bore  if  pos 
sible  through  my  huge  heap  of  postal  obligations, 
the  accumulation  of  three  or  four  years,  and  not 
very  visibly  reduced  even  by  the  heroic  efforts  of 
the  last  week.  I  have  never  in  all  my  life  written 
so  many  letters  within  the  same  space  of  time— 
and  I  reallv  think  that  is  in  the  full  sense  of  the 


LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

term  documentary  proof  of  my  recovery  of  a  nor 
mal  senile  strength.  I  go  to-morrow  over  into  Kent 
to  spend  Sunday  with  some  friends  near  Maid- 
stone  (they  have  lately  acquired  and  extraordi 
narily  restored  Allington  Castle,  which  is  down  in 
a  deep  sequestered  bottom,  plants  its  huge  feet  in 
the  Medway,  actually  overflowed,  I  believe,  up  to 
its  middle).  I  come  back  here  again  (with  acute 
lumbago,  I  quite  expect,)  and  begin  again — that 
is,  write  300  more  letters;  after  which  I  relapse 
fondly,  and  I  think  very  wisely,  upon  London. 
Now  that  I  am  not  obliged  to  be  in  this  place  (by 
having  so  committed  myself  to  it  for  better  for 
worse  as  I  had  in  the  past)  I  find  I  quite  like  it — 
having  enjoyed  the  deep  peace  and  ease  of  it  this 
last  week;  but  I  have  to  go  away  to  prove  to  my 
self  the  non-obligation  to  stay,  and  that  takes  some 
doing — which  I  shall  have  set  about  by  the  15th. 
London  was  quite  delicious  during  that  brown  still 
Xmastide — the  four  or  five  days  after  I  wrote  to 
you :  the  drop  of  life  and  of  traffic  was  beyond  any 
thing  of  the  sort  I  had  ever  seen  in  that  frame.  The 
gregariousness  of  movement  of  the  population  is 
an  amazing  phenomenon — they  had  vanished  so  in 
a  bunch  that  the  streets  were  an  uncanny  desert, 
with  the  difference  from  of  old  that  the  taxis  and 
motors  were  more  absent  than  the  cabs  and  car 
riages  and  busses  ever  were,  for  at  any  given 
moment  the  horizon  is  through  this  power  of  dis 
appearance,  void  of  them — whereas  the  old  things 
had,  through  their  slowness,  to  hang  about.  One 
gets  a  taxi,  by  the  way,  much  faster  than  one  ever 
got  a  handsome  (lo,  I  have  managed  to  forget  how 
to  write  the  extinct  object!) — and  yet  one  gets  it 
from  so  much  further  away  and  from  such  an  at 
first  hopeless  void.  .  .  . 

Very  romantic  and  charming  the  arrival  of  your 
gallant  George — from  all  across  Europe — for  his 
Xmas  eve  with  you;  your  account  of  it  touches  me 


AET.  68  TO  W.  E.  NORRIS  213 

and  I  find  myself  ranking  you  with  the  celebrated 
fair  of  history  and  fable  for  whom  the  swimmings 
of  the  Hellespont  and  the  breakings  of  the  lance 
were  perpetrated.  I  congratulate  you  on  such  a 
George  in  these  for  the  most  part  merely  "awfully 
sorry"  days,  and  him  on  a  chance  of  which  he  must 
have  been  awfully  glad.  And  apropos  of  such 
felicities — or  rather  of  felicities  pure  and  simple, 
and  not  quite  such,  I  do  heartily  hope  that  you  will 
go  on  to  Spain  with  your  niece  in  the  spring — I'm 
convinced  that  you'll  find  it  a  charming  adventure. 
I've  myself  utterly  ceased  to  travel — I'm  a  limpet 
now,  for  the  rest  of  my  life,  on  the  rock  of  Britain, 
but  I  intensely  enjoy  the  travels  of  my  friends. 

My  pen  fails  and  my  clock  strikes  and  I  am 
yours  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Miss  M.  Betham  Edwards. 

Lamb  House,  Rye, 

Jan.  5th,  1912. 

Dear  Miss  Betham  Edwards, 

I  can  now  at  last  tell  you  the  sad  story  of  the 
book  for  Emily  Morgan — which  I  am  having  put 
up  to  go  to  you  with  this ;  as  well  as  explain  a  little 
my  long  silence.  The  very  day,  or  the  very  second 
day,  after  last  seeing  you,  a  change  suddenly 
took  place,  under  great  necessity,  in  my  then  cur 
rent  plans  and  arrangements;  I  departed  under 
that  stress  for  London,  practically  to  spend  the 
winter,  and  have  come  back  but  for  a  very  small 
number  of  days — I  return  there  next  week.  "But," 
you  will  say,  "why  didn't  you  send  the  promised 
volume  for  E.  M.  from  London  then?  What  mat 
ter  to  us  where  it  came  from  so  long  as  it  came?" 
To  which  I  reply:  "Well,  I  had  in  this  house  a 
small  row  of  books  available  for  the  purpose  and 


LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

among  which  I  could  choose — also  which  I  came 
away,  in  my  precipitation,  too  soon  to  catch  up  in 
flight.  In  London  I  should  have  to  go  and  buy  the 
thing,  my  own  production — while  I  have  two  or 
three  bran-new  volumes,  which  will  be  an  economy 
to  a  man  utterly  depleted  by  the  inordinate  number 
of  copies  of  The  Outcry  that  he  has  given  away 
and  all  but  six  of  which  he  has  had  to  pay  for — 
his  sanguinary  (admire  my  restraint!)  publisher 
allowing  him  but  six."  "Why  then  couldn't  you 
write  home  and  have  one  of  the  books  in  question 
sent  you? — or  have  it  sent  to  Hastings  directly  from 
your  house?"  "Because  I  am  the  happy  posses 
sor  of  a  priceless  parlourmaid  who  loves  doing  up 
books,  and  other  parcels,  and  does  them  up  beauti 
fully,  and  if  the  volume  comes  to  me  here,  to  be 
inscribed,  I  shall  then  have  to  do  it  up  myself,  an 
act  for  which  I  have  absolutely  no  skill  and  which 
I  dread  and  loathe,  and  tumble  it  forth  clumsily 
and  insecurely!  Besides  I  was  vague  as  to  which 
of  my  works  I  did  have  on  the  accessible  shelf — 
I  only  knew  I  had  some — and  would  have  to  look 
and  consider  and  decide:  which  I  have  now  punc 
tually  done.  And  the  thing  will  be  beautifully 
wrapped!"  "That's  all  very  well;  but  why  then 
didn't  you  write  and  explain  why  it  was  that  you 
were  keeping  us  unserved  and  uninformed?"  "Oh, 
because  from  the  moment  I  go  up  to  town  I 
plunge — plunge  into  the  great  whirlpool  of  postal 
matter,  social  matter,  and  above  all,  this  time,  grey 
matter  of  cerebration — having  got  back  to  horrible 
arrears  of  work  and  being  at  best  so  postally  sub 
merged  during  these  last  weeks  that  every  claim  of 
that  sort  that  could  be  temporarily  dodged  was  a 
claim  that  found  me  shameless  and  heartless."  But 
you  see  the  penalty  of  all  is  that  I  have  to  write  all 
this  now. 

.  .  .  I'm  glad  you  like  adverbs — I  adore  them; 
they  are  the  only  qualifications  I  really  much  re- 


AET.  68  TO  MISS  M.  BETHAM  EDWARDS  215 

spect,  and  I  agree  with  the  fine  author  of  your 
quotations  in  saying — or  in  thinking — that  the 
sense  for  them  is  the  literary  sense.  None  other  is 
much  worth  speaking  of.  But  I  hope  my  volume 
won't  contain  too  many  for  Emily  Morgan.  Don't 
let  her  dream  of  "acknowledging"  it.  She  can  do 
so  when  we  meet  again.  Perhaps  you  can  even  help 
her  out  with  the  book  by  reading,  yourself,  the 
Beast  in  the  Jungle,  say — or  the  Birthplace.  May 
our  generally  so  ambiguous  1912  be  all  easy  figur 
ing  for  you.  Yours,  dear  Miss  Betham  Edwards, 
all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Wilfred  Sheridan. 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  Wilfred  Sheridan  had  asked  him  to  be 
godfather  to  their  eldest  child. 

105  Pall  Mall,  S.W. 

Jan.   12th,  1912. 
My  dear  Wilfred, 

Beautiful  and  touching  to  me  your  con 
joined  appeal,  with  dear  Clare's,  but  I  beg  you  to 
see  the  matter  in  the  clear  and  happy  light  when 
I  say  that  I'm  afraid  it  won't  do  and  that  the  blest 
Babe  must  really  be  placed,  on  the  threshhold  of 
life  (there  should  be  but  one  h  there — don't  teach 
her  to  spell  by  me!)  under  some  more  valid  and 
more  charming  protection  than  that  of  my  accumu 
lated  and  before  long  so  concluding  years.  She 
mustn't  be  taken,  for  her  first  happy  holiday,  to 
visit  her  late  godfather's  tomb — as  would  certainly 
be  the  case  were  I  to  lend  myself  to  the  fond  ana 
chronism  her  too  rosy-visioned  parents  so  flatter 
ingly  propose.  You  see,  dear  Wilfred,  I  speak 
from  a  wealth  of  wisdom  and  experience — life  has 


216       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

made  me  rather  exceptionally  acquainted  with  the 
godpaternal  function  (so  successful  an  impostor 
would  I  seem  to  have  been,)  and  it  was  long  since 
brought  home  to  me  that  the  character  takes  more 
wearing  and  its  duties  more  performing  than  I  feel 
I  have  ever  been  able  to  give  it.  I  have  three  god 
children  living  (for  to  some  I  have  been  fatal)  — 
two  daughters  and  a  son;  and  my  conscience  tells 
me  that  I  have  long  grossly  neglected  them.  They 
write  me — at  considerable  length  sometimes,  and 
I  just  remember  that  I  have  one  of  their  last  sweet 
appeals  still  unanswered.  This,  dear  Clare  and 
dear  Wilfred,  is  purely  veracious  history — a  dark 
chapter  in  my  life.  Let  me  not  add  another — let 
me  show  at  last  a  decent  compunction.  Let  me  not 
offer  up  a  helpless  and  unconscious  little  career  on 
the  altar  of  my  incompetence.  Frankly,  the  lovely 
child  should  find  at  her  font  a  younger  and  braver 
and  nimbler  presence,  one  that  shall  go  on  with 
her  longer  and  become  accessible  to  her  personal 
knowledge.  You  will  feel  this  together  on  easier 
reflection — just  as  you  will  see  how  my  plea  goes 
hand  in  hand  with  my  deep  appreciation  of  your 
exquisite  confidence. 

You  must  indeed,  Wilfred,  have  been  through 
terrific  tension — I  gathered  from  Ethel  Dilke's 
letter  that  Clare's  crisis  had  been  dire;  such  are 
not  the  hours  when  a  man  most  feels  the  privilege 
and  pride  of  fatherhood.  But  I  rejoice  greatly 
in  the  good  conditions  now,  and  already  make  out 
that  the  daughter  is  to  be  of  prodigious  power, 
beauty  and  stature.  I  feel  for  that  matter  that  by 
the  time  Easter  comes  I  should  drop  her  straight 
into  the  ritual  reservoir — with  a  scandalous  splash. 
It  will  take  more  than  me — !  (though  you  may 
well  say  you  don't  want  more — after  so  many 
words!)  I  embrace  you  all  three  and  am  devot 
edly  yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


AET.  68    TO  WALTER  V.  R.  BERRY 


To  Walter  V.  R.  Berry. 

H.  J.  never  at  any  time  received  presents  easily,  and 
the  difficulty  seems  to  have  reached  a  climax  over  one 
recently  sent  him  by  Mr.  Berry.  It  may  not  be  obvious 
that  the  gift  in  question  was  a  leather  dressing-case. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
February  8th,  1912. 

Tres-cher  et  tres-grand  ami ! 

How  you  must  have  wondered  at  my  silence! 
But  it  has  been,  alas,  inevitable  and  now  is  but 
feebly  and  dimly  broken.  Just  after  you  passed 
through  London — or  rather  even  while  you  were 
passing  through  it — I  began  to  fall  upon  evil  days 
again ;  a  deplorable  bout  of  unwellness  which,  mak 
ing  me  fit  for  nothing,  gave  me  a  sick  struggle, 
first,  in  those  awkward  Pall  Mall  conditions,  and 
then  reduced  me  to  scrambling  back  here  as  best  I 
might,  where  I  have  been  these  several  days  but  a 
poor  ineffectual  rag.  I  shall  get  better  here  if  I 
can  still  further  draw  on  my  sadly  depleted  store 
of  time  and  patience ;  but  meanwhile  I  am  capable 
but  of  this  weak  and  appealing  grimace — so  deeply 
discouraged  am  I  to  feel  that  there  are  still,  and 
after  I  have  travelled  so  far,  such  horrid  little  deep 
holes  for  me  to  tumble  into.  (This  has  been  a 
deeper  one  than  for  many  months,  though  I  am, 
I  believe,  slowly  scrambling  out;  and  blest  to  me 
has  been  the  resource  of  crawling  to  cover  here — 
for  better  aid  and  comfort.)  .  .  .  The  case  has 
really  and  largely  been,  however,  all  the  while, 
dearest  Walter,  that  of  my  having  had  to  yield, 
just  after  your  glittering  passage  in  town,  to  that 
simply  overwhelming  coup  de  massue  of  your — 
well,  of  your  you  know  what.  It  was  that  that 
knocked  me  down — when  I  was  just  trembling  for 
a  fall;  it  was  that  that  laid  me  flat. 


218       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

February  14th.  Well,  dearest  Walter,  it  laid 
me  after  all  so  flat  that  I  broke  down,  a  week  ago, 
in  the  foregoing  attempt  to  do  you,  and  your  in 
effable  procede,  some  manner  of  faint  justice;  I 
wasn't  then  apt  for  any  sort  of  right  or  worthy 
approach  to  you,  and  there  was  nothing  for  me  but 
resignedly  to  intermit  and  me  recoucher.  You  had 
done  it  with  your  own  mailed  fist — mailed  in  glit 
tering  gold,  speciously  glazed  in  polished,  incon 
ceivably  and  indescribably  sublimated,  leather,  and 
I  had  rallied  but  too  superficially  from  the  stroke. 
It  claimed  its  victim  afresh,  and  I  have  lain  the 
better  part  of  a  week  just  languidly  heaving  and 
groaning  as  a  result  de  vos  ceuvres — and  forced 
thereby  quite  to  neglect  and  ignore  all  letters.  I 
am  a  little  more  on  my  feet  again,  and  if  this  con 
tinues  shall  presently  be  able  to  return  to  town 
(Saturday  or  Monday;)  where,  however,  the  mon 
strous  object  will  again  confront  me.  That  is  the 
grand  fact  of  the  situation — that  is  the  tawny  lion, 
portentous  creature,  in  my  path.  I  can't  get  past 
him,  I  can't  get  round  him,  and  on  the  other  hand 
he  stands  glaring  at  me,  refusing  to  give  way  and 
practically  blocking  all  my  future.  I  can't  live 
with  him,  you  see;  because  I  can't  live  up  to  him. 
His  claims,  his  pretensions,  his  dimensions,  his  as 
sumptions  and  consumptions,  above  all  the  manner 
in  which  he  causes  every  surrounding  object  (on 
my  poor  premises  or  within  my  poor  range)  to  tell 
a  dingy  or  deplorable  tale — all  this  makes  him  the 
very  scourge  of  my  life,  the  very  blot  on  my  scut 
cheon.  He  doesn't  regild  that  rusty  metal — he 
simply  takes  up  an  attitude  of  gorgeous  swagger, 
straight  in  front  of  all  the  rust  and  the  rubbish, 
which  makes  me  look  as  if  I  had  stolen  somebody 
else's  (re-garnished  blason)  and  were  trying  to 
palm  it  off  as  my  own.  Cher  et  bon  Gaultier,  I 
simply  can't  afford  him,  and  that  is  the  sorry 
homely  truth.  He  is  out  of  the  picture — out  of 


AET.  68     TO  WALTER  V.  R.  BERRY          219 

mine;  and  behold  me  condemned  to  live  forever 
with  that  canvas  turned  to  the  wall.  Do  you  know 
what  that  means? — to  have  to  give  up  going  about 
at  all,  lest  complications  (of  the  most  incalculable 
order)  should  ensue  from  its  being  seen  what  I  go 
about  with.  Bonne  renommee  vaut  mieux  que  sac- 
de-voyage  dore,  and  though  I  may  have  had  weak 
nesses  that  have  brought  me  a  little  under  public 
notice,  my  modest  hold-all  (which  has  accompanied 
me  in  most  of  my  voyage  through  life )  has  at  least, 
so  far  as  I  know,  never  fait  jaser.  All  this  I  have 
to  think  of — and  I  put  it  candidly  to  you  while  yet 
there  is  time.  That  you  shouldn't  have  counted  the 
cost — to  yourself — that  is  after  all  perhaps  con 
ceivable  (quoiqu'a  peine!)  but  that  you  shouldn't 
have  counted  the  cost  to  me,  to  whom  it  spells  ruin : 
that  ranks  you  with  those  great  lurid,  though  lovely, 
romantic  and  historic  figures  and  charmers  who 
have  scattered  their  affections  and  lavished  their 
favours  only  (as  it  has  presently  appeared)  to  con 
sume  and  to  destroy!  More  prosaically,  dearest 
Walter  (if  one  of  the  most  lyric  acts  recorded  in 
history — and  one  of  the  most  finely  aesthetic,  and 
one  stamped  with  the  most  matchless  grace,  has  a 
prosaic  side,)  I  have  been  truly  overwhelmed  by 
the  princely  munificence  and  generosity  of  your 
precede,  and  I  have  gasped  under  it  while  tossing 
on  the  bed  of  indisposition.  For  a  beau  geste,  c'est 
le  plus  beau,  by  all  odds,  of  any  in  all  my  life  ever 
esquisse  in  my  direction,  and  it  has,  as  such,  left 
me  really  and  truly  panting  helplessly  after — or 
rather  quite  intensely  before — it!  What  is  a  poor 
man  to  do,  mon  prince,  mon  bon  prince,  mon 
grand  prince,  when  so  prodigiously  practised  upon? 
There  is  nothing,  you  see :  for  the  proceeding  itself 
swallows  at  a  gulp,  with  its  open  crimson  jaws 
(such  a  rosy  mouth!)  like  Carlyle's  Mirabeau,  "all 
formulas."  One  doesn't  "thank,"  I  take  it,  when 
the  heavens  open — that  is  when  the  whale  of  Mr. 


220       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1912 

Allen's-in-the-Strand  celestial  shopfront  does — and 
discharge  straight  into  one's  lap  the  perfect  com 
pendium,  the  very  burden  of  the  song,  of  just  what 
the  Angels  have  been  raving  about  ever  since  we 
first  heard  of  them.  Well  may  they  have  raved 
— but  I  can't,  you  see;  I  have  to  take  the  case  (the 
incomparable  suit-case)  in  abject  silence  and  sub 
mission.  Ah,  Walter,  Walter,  why  do  you  do  these 
things?  they're  magnificent,  but  they're  not — well, 
discussable  or  permissible  or  forgiveable.  At  least 
not  all  at  once.  It  will  take  a  long,  long  time. 
Only  little  by  little  and  buckle-hole  by  buckle-hole, 
shall  I  be  able  to  look,  with  you,  even  one  strap  in 
the  face.  As  yet  a  sacred  horror  possesses  me,  and 
I  must  ask  you  to  let  me,  please,  though  writing 
you  at  such  length,  not  so  much  as  mention  the  sub 
ject.  It's  better  so.  Perhaps  your  conscience  will 
tell  you  why — tell  you,  I  mean,  that  great  supreme 
gestes  are  only  fair  when  addressed  to  those  who 
can  themselves  gesticulate.  I  can't — and  it  makes 
me  feel  so  awkward  and  graceless  and  poor.  I 
go  about  trying — so  as  to  hurl  it  (something  or 
other)  back  on  you;  but  it  doesn't  come  off — prac 
tice  doesn't  make  perfect;  you  are  victor,  winner, 
master,  oh  irresistible  one — you've  done  it,  you've 
brought  it  off  and  got  me  down  forever,  and  I  must 
just  feel  your  weight  and  bear  your  might  to  bless 
your  name — even  to  the  very  end  of  the  days  of 
yours,  dearest  Walter,  all  too  abjectly  and  too 
touchedly, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


AET.  68  TO  W.  D.  HOWELLS 


To  W.  D.  Howells. 

The  following  "open  letter"  was  written  to  be  read 
at  the  dinner  held  in  New  York  in  celebration  of  Mr. 
Howells's  seventy-fifth  birthday. 

105  Pall  Mall,  S.W. 

February  19th,  1912. 
My  dear  Howells, 

It  is  made  known  to  me  that  they  are  soon 
to  feast  in  New  York  the  newest  and  freshest  o'f 
the  splendid  birthdays  to  which  you  keep  treating 
us,  and  that  your  many  friends  will  meet  round 
you  to  rejoice  in  it  and  reaffirm  their  allegiance. 
I  shall  not  be  there,  to  my  sorrow,  and  though  this 
is  inevitable  I  yet  want  to  be  missed,  peculiarly 
and  monstrously  missed ;  so  that  these  words  shall 
be  a  public  apology  for  my  absence :  read  by  you, 
if  you  like  and  can  stand  it,  but  better  still  read  to 
you  and  in  fact  straight  at  you,  by  whoever  will  be 
so  kind  and  so  loud  and  so  distinct.    For  I  doubt, 
you  see,  whether  any  of  your  toasters  and  acclaim- 
ers  have  anything  like  my  ground  and  title  for  be 
ing  with  you  at  such  an  hour.    There  can  scarce  be 
one,  I  think,  to-day,  who  has  known  you  from  so 
far  back,  who  has  kept  so  close  to  you  for  so  long, 
and  who  has  such  fine  old  reasons — so  old,  yet  so 
well  preserved — to  feel  your  virtue  and  sound  your 
praise.     My  debt  to  you  began  well-nigh  half  a 
century  ago,  in  the  most  personal  way  possible,  and 
then  kept  growing  and  growing  with  your  own 
admirable  growth — but  always  rooted  in  the  early 
intimate  benefit.     This  benefit  was  that  you  held 
out  your  open  editorial  hand  to  me  at  the  time  I 
began  to  write — and  I  allude  especially  to  the  sum 
mer  of  1866 — with  a  frankness  and  sweetness  of 
hospitality  that  was  really  the  making  of  me,  the 
making  of  the  confidence  that  required  help  and 


222       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

sympathy  and  that  I  should  otherwise,  I  think, 
have  strayed  and  stumbled  about  a  long  time  with 
out  acquiring.  You  showed  me  the  way  and  opened 
me  the  door ;  you  wrote  to  me,  and  confessed  your 
self  struck  with  me — I  have  never  forgotten  the 
beautiful  thrill  of  that.  You  published  me  at  once 
— and  paid  me,  above  all,  with  a  dazzling  promp 
titude;  magnificently,  I  felt,  and  so  that  nothing 
since  has  ever  quite  come  up  to  it.  More  than  this 
even,  you  cheered  me  on  with  a  sympathy  that  was 
in  itself  an  inspiration.  I  mean  that  you  talked 
to  me  and  listened  to  me — ever  so  patiently  and 
genially  and  suggestively  conversed  and  consorted 
with  me.  This  won  me  to  you  irresistibly  and  made 
you  the  most  interesting  person  I  knew — lost  as  I 
was  in  the  charming  sense  that  my  best  friend  was 
an  editor,  and  an  almost  insatiable  editor,  and  that 
such  a  delicious  being  as  that  was  a  kind  of  property 
of  my  own.  Yet  how  didn't  that  interest  still 
quicken  and  spread  when  I  became  aware  that — 
with  such  attention  as  you  could  spare  from  us, 
for  I  recognised  my  fellow  beneficiaries — you  had 
started  to  cultivate  your  great  garden  as  well;  the 
tract  of  virgin  soil  that,  beginning  as  a  cluster  of 
bright,  fresh,  sunny  and  savoury  patches,  close 
about  the  house,  as  it  were,  was  to  become  that  vast 
goodly  pleasaunce  of  art  and  observation,  of  ap 
preciation  and  creation,  in  which  you  have  laboured, 
without  a  break  or  a  lapse,  to  this  day,  and  in  which 
you  have  grown  so  grand  a  show  of — well,  really 
of  everything.  Your  liberal  visits  to  my  plot,  and 
your  free-handed  purchases  there,  were  still  greater 
events  when  I  began  to  see  you  handle,  yourself, 
with  such  ease  the  key  to  our  rich  and  inexhaustible 
mystery.  Then  the  question  of  what  you  would 
make  of  your  own  powers  began  to  be  even  more 
interesting  than  the  question  of  what  you  would 
make  of  mine — all  the  more,  I  confess,  as  you  had 
ended  by  settling  this  one  so  happily.  My  con- 


AET.  68  TO  W.  D.  HOWELLS  223 

fidence  in  myself,  which  you  had  so  helped  me  to, 
gave  way  to  a  fascinated  impression  of  your  own 
spread  and  growth ;  for  you  broke  out  so  insistently 
and  variously  that  it  was  a  charm  to  watch  and  an 
excitement  to  follow  you.  The  only  drawback  that 
I  remember  suffering  from  was  that  I,  your  origi 
nal  debtor,  couldn't  print  or  publish  or  pay  you— 
which  would  have  been  a  sort  of  ideal  repayment 
and  of  enhanced  credit ;  you  could  take  care  of  your 
self  so  beautifully,  and  I  could  (unless  by  some 
occasional  happy  chance  or  rare  favour)  scarce  so 
much  as  glance  at  your  proofs  or  have  a  glimpse 
of  your  "endings."  I  could  only  read  you,  full 
blown  and  finished — and  see,  with  the  rest  of  the 
world,  how  you  were  doing  it  again  and  again. 

That  then  was  what  I  had  with  time  to  settle 
down  to — the  common  attitude  of  seeing  you  do 
it  again  and  again;  keep  on  doing  it,  with  your 
heroic  consistency  and  your  noble,  genial  abun 
dance,  during  all  the  years  that  have  seen  so  many 
apparitions  come  and  go,  so  many  vain  flourishes 
attempted  and  achieved,  so  many  little  fortunes 
made  and  unmade,  so  many  weaker  inspirations 
betrayed  and  spent.  Having  myself  to  practise 
meaner  economies,  I  have  admired,  from  period  to 
period,  your  so  ample  and  liberal  flow;  wondered 
at  your  secret  for  doing  positively  a  little — what 
do  I  say  a  little?  I  mean  a  magnificent  deal! — of 
Everything.  I  seem  to  myself  to  have  faltered  and 
languished,  to  have  missed  more  occasions  than  I 
have  grasped,  while  you  have  piled  up  your  monu 
ment  just  by  remaining  at  your  post.  For  you  have 
had  the  advantage,  after  all,  of  breathing  an  air 
that  has  suited  and  nourished  you;  of  sitting  up  to 
your  neck,  as  I  may  say — or  at  least  up  to  your 
waist — amid  the  sources  of  your  inspiration.  There 
and  so  you  were  at  your  post ;  there  and  so  the  spell 
could  ever  work  for  you,  there  and  so  your  rela 
tion  to  all  your  material  grow  closer  and  stronger, 


£24       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

your  perception  penetrate,  your  authority  accumu 
late.  They  make  a  great  array,  a  literature  in  them 
selves,  your  studies  of  American  life,  so  acute,  so 
direct,  so  disinterested,  so  preoccupied  but  with 
the  fine  truth  of  the  case;  and  the  more  attaching 
to  me,  always,  for  their  referring  themselves  to  a 
time  and  an  order  when  we  knew  together  what 
American  life  was — or  thought  we  did,  deluded 
though  we  may  have  been!  I  don't  pretend  to 
measure  the  effect,  or  to  sound  the  depths,  if  they 
be  not  the  shallows,  of  the  huge  wholesale  importa 
tions  and  so-called  assimilations  of  this  later  time; 
I  can  only  feel  and  speak  for  those  conditions  in 
which,  as  "quiet  observers,"  as  careful  painters,  as 
sincere  artists,  we  could  still,  in  our  native,  our 
human  and  social  element,  know  more  or  less  where 
we  were  and  feel  more  or  less  what  we  had  hold 
of.  You  knew  and  felt  these  things  better  than 
I;  you  had  learnt  them  earlier  and  more  inti 
mately,  and  it  was  impossible,  I  think,  to  be  in 
more  instinctive  and  more  informed  possession 
of  the  general  truth  of  your  subject  than  you 
happily  found  yourself.  The  real  affair  of  the 
American  case  and  character,  as  it  met  your  view 
and  brushed  your  sensibility,  that  was  what  in 
spired  and  attached  you,  and,  heedless  of  foolish 
flurries  from  other  quarters,  of  all  wild  or  weak 
slashings  of  the  air  and  wavings  in  the  void,  you 
gave  yourself  to  it  with  an  incorruptible  faith.  You 
saw  your  field  with  a  rare  lucidity;  you  saw  all  it 
had  to  give  in  the  way  of  the  romance  of  the  real 
and  the  interest  and  the  thrill  and  the  charm  of  the 
common,  as  one  may  put  it;  the  character  and  the 
comedy,  the  point,  the  pathos,  the  tragedy,  the 
particular  home-grown  humanity  under  your  eyes 
and  your  hand  and  with  which  the  life  all  about  you 
was  closely  interknitted.  Your  hand  reached  out 
to  these  things  with  a  fondness  that  was  in  itself 
a  literary  gift,  and  played  with  them  as  the  artist 


AET.  68  TO  W.  D.  HOWELLS  225 

only  and  always  can  play:  freely,  quaintly,  incal 
culably,  with  all  the  assurance  of  his  fancy  and  his 
irony,  and  yet  with  that  fine  taste  for  the  truth  and 
the  pity  and  the  meaning  of  the  matter  which  keeps 
the  temper  of  observation  both  sharp  and  sweet. 
To  observe,  by  such  an  instinct  and  by  such  re 
flection,  is  to  find  work  to  one's  hand  and  a  chal 
lenge  in  every  bush ;  and  as  the  familiar  American 
scene  thus  bristled  about  you,  so,  year  by  year, 
your  vision  more  and  more  justly  responded  and 
swarmed.    You  put  forth  A  Modern  Instance,  and 
The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham,  and  A  Hazard  of  New 
Fortunes,  and  The  Landlord  at  Lion's  Head,  and 
The  Kentons  (that  perfectly  classic  illustration  of 
your  spirit  and  your  form,)  after  having  put  forth 
in  perhaps  lighter-fingered  prelude  A  Foregone 
Conclusion,  and  The  Undiscovered  Country,  and 
The  Lady  of  the  Aroostook,  and  The  Minister's 
Charge — to  make  of  a  long  list  too  short  a  one; 
with  the  effect,  again  and  again,  of  a  feeling  for  the 
human  relation,  as  the  social  climate  of  our  coun 
try  qualifies,  intensifies,  generally  conditions  and 
colours  it,  which,  married  in  perfect  felicity  to  the 
expression  you  found  for  its  service,  constituted 
the  originality  that  we  want  to  fasten  upon  you, 
as  with  silver  nails,  to-night.    Stroke  by  stroke  and 
book  by  book  your  work  was  to  become,  for  this 
exquisite  notation  of  our  whole  democratic  light 
and  shade  and  give  and  take,  in  the  highest  degree 
documentary;  so  that  none  other,  through  all  your 
fine  long  season,  could  approach  it  in  value  and 
amplitude.    None,  let  me  say  too,  was  to  approach 
it  in  essential  distinction;  for  you  had  grown  mas 
ter,  by  insidious  practices  best  known  to  yourself, 
of  a  method  so  easy  and  so  natural,  so  marked  with 
the  personal  element  of  your  humour  and  the  play, 
not  less  personal,  of  your  sympathy,  that  the  critic 
kept  coming  on  its  secret  connection  with  the  grace 
of  letters  much  as  Fenimore  Cooper's  Leather- 


LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

stocking — so  knowing  to  be  able  to  do  it! — comes, 
in  the  forest,  on  the  subtle  tracks  of  Indian  braves. 
However,  these  things  take  us  far,  and  what  I 
wished  mainly  to  put  on  record  is  my  sense  of  that 
unfailing,  testifying  truth  in  you  which  will  keep 
you  from  ever  being  neglected.  The  critical  in 
telligence — if  any  such  fitful  and  discredited  light 
may  still  be  conceived  as  within  our  sphere — has 
not  at  all  begun  to  render  you  its  tribute.  The 
more  inquiringly  and  perceivingly  it  shall  still  be 
projected  upon  the  American  life  we  used  to  know, 
the  more  it  shall  be  moved  by  the  analytic  and  his 
toric  spirit,  the  more  indispensable,  the  more  a  ves 
sel  of  light,  will  you  be  found.  It's  a  great  thing 
to  have  used  one's  genius  and  done  one's  work  with 
such  quiet  and  robust  consistency  that  they  fall  by 
their  own  weight  into  that  happy  service.  You 
may  remember  perhaps,  and  I  like  to  recall,  how 
the  great  and  admirable  Taine,  in  one  of  the  fine 
excursions  of  his  French  curiosity,  greeted  you  as 
a  precious  painter  and  a  sovereign  witness.  But 
his  appreciation,  I  want  you  to  believe  with  me, 
will  yet  be  carried  much  further,  and  then — though 
you  may  have  argued  yourself  happy,  in  your  gen 
erous  way  and  with  your  incurable  optimism,  even 
while  noting  yourself  not  understood — your  really 
beautiful  time  will  come.  Nothing  so  much  as 
feeling  that  he  may  himself  perhaps  help  a  little 
to  bring  it  on  can  give  pleasure  to  yours  all  faith 
fully,  ' 

HENKY  JAMES. 


AET.  68  TO  MRS.  WHARTON  227 


To  Mrs.  Wliarton. 

The  following  refers  to  the  third  volume  (covering  the 
years  1838  to  1848)  of  Mme  Vladimir  Karenine's  "George 
Sand,  sa  Vie  et  ses  CEuvres,"  an  article  on  which,  written 
by  H.  J.  for  the  Quarterly  Review,  appears  in  Notes  on 
Novelists. 

Reform  Club,  Pall  Mall,  S.W. 
March  13th,  1912. 

Dearest  Edith, 

Just  a  word  to  thank  you — so  inadequately 
— for  everything.  Your  letter  of  the  1st  infinitely 
appeals  to  me,  and  the  3d  vol.  of  the  amazing 
Vladimir  (amazing  for  acharnement  over  her  sub 
ject)  has  rejoiced  my  heart  the  more  that  I  had 
quite  given  up  expecting  it.  The  two  first  vols. 
had  long  ago  deeply  held  me — but  I  had  at  last 
had  to  suppose  them  but  a  colossal  fragment. 
Fortunately  the  whole  thing  proves  less  fragmen 
tary  than  colossal,  and  our  dear  old  George  ressort 
more  and  more  prodigious  the  nearer  one  gets  to 
her.  The  passages  you  marked  contribute  indeed 
most  to  this  ineffable  effect — and  the  long  letter 
to  sweet  Solange  is  surely  one  of  the  rarest  fruits 
of  the  human  intelligence,  one  of  the  great  things 
of  literature.  And  what  a  value  it  all  gets  from 
our  memory  of  that  wondrous  day  when  we  ex 
plored  the  very  scene  where  they  pigged  so  thrill- 
ingly  together.  What  a  crew,  what  mceurs,  what 
habits,  what  conditions  and  relations  every  way — 
and  what  an  altogether  mighty  and  marvellous 
George! — not  diminished  by  all  the  greasiness  and 
smelliness  in  which  she  made  herself  (and  so  many 
other  persons!)  at  home.  Poor  gentlemanly,  cruci 
fied  Chop! — not  naturally  at  home  in  grease — but 
having  been  originally  pulled  in — and  floundering 
there  at  last  to  extinction!  Ce  qui  depasse,  how 
ever — and  it  makes  the  last  word  about  dear  old 
G.  really — is  her  overwhelming  glibness,  as  ex- 


228       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

amplified,  e.g.,  in  her  long  letter  to  Gryzmala  (or 
whatever  his  name,)  the  one  to  the  first  page  or 
two  of  which  your  pencil-marks  refer  me,  and  in 
which  she  "posts"  him,  as  they  say  at  Stockbridge, 
as  to  all  her  amours.  To  have  such  a  flow  of  remark 
oh  that  subject,  and  everything  connected  with  it, 
at  her  command  helps  somehow  to  make  one  feel 
that  Providence  laid  up  for  the  French  such  a  store 
of  remark,  in  advance  and,  as  it  were,  should  the 
worst  befall,  that  their  conduct  and  mceurs,  coming 
after,  had  positively  to  justify  and  do  honour  to 
the  whole  collection  of  formulae,  phrases  and,  as  I 
say,  glibnesses — so  that  as  there  were  at  any  rate 
such  things  there  for  them  to  inevitably  say,  why 
not  simply  do  all  the  things  that  would  give  them 

•  a  rapport  and  a  sense?  The  things  we,  poor  dis 
inherited  race,  do,  we  have  to  do  so  dimly  and 
sceptically,  without  the  sense  of  any  such  beautiful 
cadres  awaiting  us — and  therefore  poorly  and  go- 

'  ing  but  half — or  a  tenth — of  the  way.  It  makes  a 
difference  when  you  have  to  invent  your  sugges 
tions  and  glosses  all  after  the  fact:  you  do  it  so 
miserably  compared  with  Providence — especially 
Providence  aided  by  the  French  language:  which 
by  the  way  convinces  me  that  Providence  thinks 
and  really  expresses  itself  only  in  French,  the  lan 
guage  of  gallantry.  It  will  be  a  joy  when  we  can 
next  converse  on  these  and  cognate  themes — I 
know  of  no  such  link  of  true  interchange  as  a  com 
munity  of  interest  in  dear  old  George. 

I  don't  know  what  else  to  tell  you — nor  where 
this  will  find  you.  ...  I  kind  of  pray  that  you  may 
have  been  able  to  make  yourself  a  system  of  some 
sort — to  have  arrived  at  some  modus  vivendi.  The 
impossible  wears  on  us,  but  we  wear  a  little  here, 
I  think,  even  on  the  coal-strike  and  the  mass  of  its 
attendant  misery;  though  they  produce  an  effect 
and  create  an  atmosphere  unspeakably  dismal  and 
depressing;  to  which  the  window-smashing  women 


AET.  68  TO  MRS.  WHARTON  229 

add  a  darker  shade.    I  am  blackly  bored  when  the 
latter  are  at  large  and  at  work ;  but  somehow  I  am 
still  more  blackly  bored  when  they  are  shut  up  in 
Holloway  and  we  are  deprived  of  them.  .  .  . 
Yours  all  and  always,  dearest  Edith, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  II .  G.  Wells. 

This  refers  to  a  proposal  (which  did  not  take  effect) 
that  Mr.  Wells  should  become  a  member  of  the  lately 
formed  Academic  Committee  of  the  Royal  Society  of 
Literature. 

105  Pall  Mall,  S.W. 
March  25th,  1912. 

My  dear  Wells, 

Your  letter  is  none  the  less  interesting  for 
being  what,  alas,  I  believed  it  might  be ;  in  spite  of 
which  interest — or  in  spite  of  which  belief  at  least 
— here  I  am  at  it  again!  I  know  perfectly  what 
you  mean  by  your  indifference  to  Academies  and 
Associations,  Bodies  and  Boards,  on  all  this  ground 
of  ours;  no  one  should  know  better,  as  it  is  pre 
cisely  my  own  state  of  mind — really  caring  as  I 
do  for  nothing  in  the  world  but  lonely  patient  vir 
tue,  which  doesn't  seek  that  company.  Neverthe 
less  I  fondly  hoped  that  it  might  end  for  you  as  it 
did,  under  earnest  invitation,  for  me — in  your  hav 
ing  said  and  felt  all  those  things  an d  then  joined — 
for  the  general  amenity  and  civility  and  unim 
portance  of  the  thing,  giving  it  the  benefit  of  the 
doubt — for  the  sake  of  the  good-nature.  You  will 
say  that  you  had  no  doubt  and  couldn't  therefore 
act  on  any :  but  that  germ,  alas,  was  what  my  letter 
sought  to  implant — in  addition  to  its  not  being  a 
question  of  your  acting,  but  simply  of  your  not 
(that  is  of  your  not  refusing,  but  simply  lifting 
your  oar  and  letting  yourself  float  on  the  current 


230       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1912 

of  acclamation.)  There  would  be  no  question  of 
your  being  entangled  or  hampered,  or  even,  I  think, 
of  your  being  bored;  the  common  ground  between 
all  lovers  and  practitioners  of  our  general  form 
would  be  under  your  feet  so  naturally  and  not  at 
all  out  of  your  way;  and  it  wouldn't  be  you  in  the 
least  who  would  have  to  take  a  step  backward  or 
aside,  it  would  be  we  gravitating  toward  you,  melt 
ing  into  your  orbit  as  a  mere  more  direct  effect  of 
the  energy  of  your  genius.  Your  plea  of  your 
being  anarchic  and  seeing  your  work  as  such  isn't 
in  the  least,  believe  me,  a  reason  against;  for  (also 
believe  me)  you  are  essentially  wrong  about  that! 
No  talent,  no  imagination,  no  application  of  art, 
as  great  as  yours,  is  able  not  to  make  much  less  for 
anarchy  than  for  a  continuity  and  coherency  much 
bigger  than  any  disintegration.  There's  no  repre 
sentation,  no  picture  (which  is  your  form,)  that 
isn't  by  its  very  nature  preservation,  association, 
and  of  a  positive  associational  appeal — that  is  the 
very  grammar  of  it;  none  that  isn't  thereby  some 
sort  of  interesting  or  curious  order:  I  utterly  defy 
it  in  short  not  to  make,  all  the  anarchy  in  the  world 
aiding,  far  more  than  it  unmakes — just  as  I  utterly 
defy  the  anarchic  to  express  itself  representation- 
ally,  art  aiding,  talent  aiding,  the  play  of  invention 
aiding,  in  short  you  aiding,  without  the  grossest,  the 
absurdest  inconsistency.  So  it  is  that  you  are  in 
our  circle  anyhow  you  can  fix  it,  and  with  us  al 
ways  drawing  more  around  (though  always  at  a 
respectful  and  considerate  distance,)  fascinatedly 
to  admire  and  watch — all  to  the  greater  glory  of 
the  English  name,  and  the  brave,  as  brave  as  pos 
sible  English  array;  the  latter  brave  even  with  the 
one  American  blotch  upon  it.  Oh  patriotism! — 
that  mine,  the  mere  paying  guest  in  the  house, 
should  have  its  credit  more  at  heart  than  its  un 
natural,  its  proud  and  perverse  son!  However,  all 
this  isn't  to  worry  or  to  weary  (I  wish  it  could!) 


AET.  68  TO  H.  G.  WELLS  231 

your  ruthlessness ;  it's  only  to  drop  a  sigh  on  my 
shattered  dream  that  you  might  have  come  among 
us  with  as  much  freedom  as  grace.  I  prolong  the 
sigh  as  I  think  how  much  you  might  have  done 
for  our  freedom — and  how  little  we  could  do 
against  yours! 

Don't  answer  or  acknowledge  this  unless  it  may 
have  miraculously  moved  you  by  some  quarter  of 
an  inch.  But  then  oh  do!— though  I  must  warn 
you  that  I  shall  in  that  case  follow  it  up  to  the 
death! 

Yours  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Lady  Bell. 

Reform  Club,  Pall  Mall,  S.W. 
May  17th,  1912. 

My  dear  Florence  Bell, 

A  good  friend  of  ours — in  fact  one  of  our 
very  best — spoke  to  me  here  a  few  days  ago  of  your 
having  lately  had  (all  unknown  to  me)  a  great 
tribulation  of  illness ;  but  also  told  me,  to  my  lively 
relief,  that  you  are  getting  steadily  well  again  and 
that  (thankful  at  the  worst  for  small  mercies  after 
such  an  ordeal)  you  are  in  some  degree  accessible 
to  the  beguilement  and  consolation  of  letters.  I 
have  only  taken  time  to  wonder  whether  just  such 
a  mercy  as  this  may  not  be  even  below  the  worst- 
but  am  letting  the  question  rest  on  the  basis  of  my 
feeling  that  you  must  never,  and  that  you  mil  never, 
dream  of  any  "acknowledging"  of  so  inevitable  a 
little  sign  of  sympathy.  Such  dreams,  I  too  well 
know,  only  aggravate  and  hamper  the  upward 
struggle,  don't  in  the  least  lighten  or  quicken  it. 
Take  absolute  example  by  me — who  had  a  very  dis 
mal  bad  illness  two  and  a  half  years  ago  (from  out 


LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

of  the  blackness  of  which  I  haven't  even  now  wholly 
emerged,)  and  who  reflect  with  positive  compla 
cency  on  all  my  letters,  the  received  ones,  of  that 
time,  that  still,  and  that  largely  always  will,  re 
main  unanswered.  I  want  you  to  be  complacent 
too — though  at  this  rate  there  won't  be  much  for 
you  to  be  so  about!  I  really  hope  you  go  on 
smoothly  and  serenely — and  am  glad  now  that  I 
didn't  helplessly  know  you  were  so  stricken.  But 
I  wish  I  had  for  you  a  few  solid  chunks  of  digestible 
(that  is,  mainly  good)  news — such  as,  given  your 
constitutional  charity,  will  melt  in  your  mouth. 
(There  are  people  for  whom  only  the  other  sort 
is  digestible.)  But  I  somehow  in  these  subdued 
days — I  speak  of  my  own  very  personal  ones — 
don't  make  news ;  I  even  rather  dread  breaking  out 
into  it,  or  having  it  break  into  me:  it's  so  much 
oftener — 

May  26th.    Hill  Hall,  Theydon  Mount,  Epping. 

I  began  the  above  now  many  days  ago,  and  it  was 
dashed  from  my  hand  by  a  sudden  flap  of  one  of 
the  thousand  tentacles  of  the  London  day — broken 
off  short  by  that  aggressive  gesture  (if  the  flapping 
of  a  tentacle  is  a  conceivable  gesture;)  and  here  I 
take  it  up  again  in  another  place  and  at  the  first 
moment  of  any  sort  of  freedom  and  ease  for  it.  As 
I  read  it  over  the  interruption  strikes  me  as  a  sort 
of  blessing  in  disguise,  as  I  can't  imagine  what  I 
meant  to  say  in  that  last  portentous  sentence,  now 
doubtless  never  to  be  finished,  and  not  in  the  least 
deserving  it — even  if  it  can  have  been  anything  less 
than  the  platitude  that  the  news  one  gets  is  much 
more  usually  bad  than  good,  and  that  as  the  news' 
one  gives  is  scarce  more,  mostly,  than  the  news  one 
has  got,  so  the  indigent  state,  in  that  line,  is  more 
gracefully  worn  than  the  bloated.  I  must  have 
meant  something  better  than  that.  At  any  rate 
see  how  indigent  I  am — that  with  all  the  momen- 


69 


TO  LADY  BELL  233 

tous  things  that  ought  to  have  happened  to  me  to 
explain  my  sorry  lapse   (for  so  many  days,)   my 
chronicle  would  seem  only  of  the  smallest  beer. 
Put  it  at  least  that  with  these  humble  items  the 
texture  of  my  life  has  bristled  —  even  to  the  effect 
of  a  certain  fever  and  flurry;  but  they  are  such 
matters  as  would  make  no  figure  among  the  great 
issues  and  processions  of  Rounton  —  as  I  believe 
that  great  order  to  proceed.    The  nearest  approach 
to  the  showy  is  my  having  come  down  here  yester 
day  for  a  couple  of  days  —  in  order  not  to  prevent 
my  young  American  nephew  and  niece  (just  lately 
married,  and  to  whom  I  have  been  lending  my  little 
house  in  the  country)  from  the  amusement  of  it; 
as,  being  invited,  they  yet  wouldn't  come  without 
my  dim  protection  —  so  that  I  have  made,  dimly 
protective,  thus  much  of  a  dash  into  the  world— 
where  I  find  myself  quite  vividly  resigned.     It  is 
the  world  of  the  wonderful  and  delightful  Mrs. 
Charles  Hunter,  whom  you  may  know   (long  my 
very  kind  friend;)  and  all  swimming  just  now  in 
a  sea  of  music:  John  Sargent  (as  much  a  player 
as  a  painter,)  Percy  Grainger,  Roger  Quilter,  Wil 
fred  von  Glehn,  and  others  ;  round  whose  harmoni 
ous  circle,  however,  I  roam  as  in  outer  darkness, 
catching  a  vague  glow  through  the  veiled  windows 
of  the  temple,  but  on  the  whole  only  intelligent 
enough  to  feel  and  rue  my  stupidity  —  which  is  quite 
the  wrong  condition.    It  is  a  great  curse  not  to  be 
densely  enough  indifferent  to  enough  impossible 
things!     Most  things  are  impossible  to  me;  but  I 
blush  for  it  —  can't  brazen  it  out  that  they  are  no 
loss.    Brazening  it  out  is  the  secret  of  life  —  for  the 
pen  doues.    But  what  need  of  that  have  you,  lady 
of  the  full  programme  and  the  rich  performance? 
What  I  do  enter  here  (beyond  the  loving-kindness 
de  toute  cette  jcuncssc)  is  the  fresh  illustration  of 
the  beauty  and  amenity  and  ancientry  of  this  won 
drous  old  England,  which  at  twenty  miles  or  so 


234     LETTERS  OF    HENRY  JAMES      1912 

from  London  surrounds  this  admirable  and  inter 
esting  and  historic  house  with  a  green  country  as 
wide  and  free,  and  apparently  as  sequestered,  and 
strikingly  as  rural — in  the  Constable  way — as  if  it 
were  on  the  other  side  of  the  island.  But  I  leave  it 
to-morrow  to  go  back  to  town  till  (probably)  about 
July  1st,  before  which  I  fondly  hope  you  may  be 
so  firm  on  your  feet  as  to  be  able  to  glide  again 
over  those  beautiful  parquets  of  95.  In  that  case 
I  shall  be  so  delighted  to  glide  in  upon  you — 
assuming  my  balance  preserved — at  some  hour 
gently  appointed  by  yourself.  Then  I  shall  tell 
you  more — if  you  can  stand  more  after  this — four 
teen  sprawling  and  vacuous  pages.  (Alas,  I  am 
but  too  aware  there  is  nothing  in  them;  nothing, 
that  is,  but  the  affectionate  fidelity,  with  every 
blessing  on  your  further  complete  healing,  of) 
yours  all  constantly, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  W.  K.  Clifford. 

On  May  7,  1912,  the  Academic  Committee  of  the  Royal 
Society  of  Literature  celebrated  the  centenary  of  the 
birth  of  Robert  Browning.  H.  J.  read  a  paper  on  "The 
Novel  in  The  Ring  and  the  Book,"  afterwards  included 
in  Notes  on  Novelists.  In  an  appreciative  notice  of 
the  occasion  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  Mr.  Filson  Young 
described  his  voice  as  "old." 

Reform  Club,  Pall  Mall,  S.W. 

May  18th,  1912. 
Dearest  Lucy! 

Your  impulse  to  steep  me,  and  hold  me  down 
under  water,  in  the  Fountain  of  Youth,  with 
Charles  Boyd  muscular ly  to  help  you,  is  no  less 
beautiful  than  the  expression  you  have  given  it,  by 
which  I  am  more  touched  than  I  can  tell  you.  I 
take  it  as  one  of  your  constant  kindnesses — but  I 


AET.  69     TO  MRS.  W.  K.  CLIFFORD          235 

had,  all  the  same,  I  fear,  taken  Filson  Young's 
Invidious  Epithet  (in  that  little  compliment)  as  in 
evitable,  wholly,  though  I  believe  it  was  mainly 
applied  to  my  voice.  My  voice  was  on  that  Cen 
tenary  itself  Centenarian — for  reasons  that  couldn't 
be  helped — for  I  really  that  day  wasn't  fit  to  speak. 
As  for  one's  own  sense  of  antiquity,  my  own,  what 
is  one  to  say? — it  varies,  goes  and  comes;  at  times 
isn't  there  at  all  and  at  others  is  quite  sufficient, 
thank  you !  I  cultivate  not  thinking  about  it — and 
yet  in  certain  ways  I  like  it,  like  the  sense  of  having 
had  a  great  deal  of  life.  The  young,  on  the  whole, 
make  me  pretty  sad — the  old  themselves  don't. 
But  the  pretension  to  youth  is  a  thing  that  makes 
me  saddest  and  oldest  of  all ;  the  acceptance  of  the 
fact  that  I  am  all  the  while  growing  older  on  the 
other  hand  decidedly  rejuvenates  me;  I  say  "what 
then?"  and  the  answer  doesn't  come,  there  doesn't 
seem  to  be  any,  and  that  quite  sets  me  up.  So  I 
am  young  enough — and  you  are  magnificent,  sim 
ply:  I  get  from  you  the  sense  of  an  inexhaustible 
vital  freshness,  and  your  voice  is  the  voice  ( so  beau 
tiful!)  of  your  twentieth  year.  Your  going  to 
America  was  admirably  young — an  act  of  your 
twenty-fifth.  Don't  be  younger  than  that;  don't 
seem  a  year  younger  than  you  do  seem ;  for  in  that 
case  you  will  have  quite  withdrawn  from  my  side. 
Keep  up  with  me  a  little.  I  shall  come  to  see  you 
again  at  no  distant  day,  but  the  coming  week  seems 
to  have  got  itself  pretty  well  encumbered,  and  on 
the  24th  or  26th  I  go  to  Rye  for  four  or  five  days. 
After  that  I  expect  to  be  in  town  quite  to  the  end 
of  June.  I  am  reading  the  Green  Book  in  bits — 
as  it  were — the  only  way  in  which  I  can  read  (or 
at  least  do  read  the  contemporary  novel — though 
I  read  so  very  few — almost  none.)  My  only  way 
of  reading — apart  from  that — is  to  imagine  myself 
writing  the  thing  before  me,  treating  the  subject— 
and  thereby  often  differing  from  the  author  and  his 


236       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

— or  her — way.  I  find  G.  W.  very  brisk  and  alive, 
but  I  have  to  take  it  in  pieces,  or  liberal  sips,  and 
so  have  only  reached  the  middle.  What  I  feel 
critically  (and  I  can  feel  about  anything  of  the 
sort  but  critically)  is  that  you  don't  squeeze  your 
material  hard  and  tight  enough,  to  press  out  of  its 
ounces  and  inches  what  they  will  give.  That 
material  lies  too  loose  in  your  hand — or  your  hand, 
otherwise  expressed,  doesn't  tighten  round  it.  That 
is  the  fault  of  all  fictive  writing  now,  it  seems  to 
me — that  and  the  inordinate  abuse  of  dialogue — 
though  this  but  one  effect  of  the  not  squeezing. 
It's  a  wrong,  a  disastrous  and  unscientific  economy 
altogether.  I  squeeze  as  I  read  you — but  that,  as 
I  say,  is  rewriting!  However,  I  will  tell  you  more 
when  I  have  eaten  all  the  pieces.  And  I  shall  love 
and  stick  to  you  always — as  your  old,  very  old, 
oldest  old 

H.  J. 


To  Hugh  Walpole. 

Reform  Club,  Pall  Mall,  S.W. 
May  19th,  1912. 

.  .  .  Your  letter  greatly  moves  and  regales  me. 
Fully  do  I  enter  into  your  joy  of  sequestration, 
and  your  bliss  of  removal  from  this  scene  of  heated 
turmoil  and  dusty  despair — which,  however,  re- 
awaits  you!  Never  mind;  sink  up  to  your  neck 
into  the  brimming  basin  of  nature  and  peace,  and 
teach  yourself — by  which  I  mean  let  your  grand 
mother  teach  you — that  with  each  revolving  year 
you  will  need  and  make  more  piously  these  precious 
sacrifices  to  Pan  and  the  Muses.  History  eternally 
repeats  itself,  and  I  remember  well  how  in  the  old 
London  years  (of  my  old  London — this  isn't  that 
one)  I  used  to  clutch  at  these  chances  of  obscure 
flight  and  at  the  possession,  less  frustrated,  of  my 


AET.  69  TO  HUGH  WALPOLE  237 

soul,  my  senses  and  my  hours.  So  keep  it  up;  I 
miss  you,  little  as  I  see  you  even  when  here  (for 
I  feel  you  more  than  I  see  you;)  but  I  surrender 
you  at  whatever  cost  to  the  beneficent  powers. 
Therefore  I  rejoice  in  the  getting  on  of  your  work 
— how  splendidly  copious  your  flow;  and  am  much 
interested  in  what  you  tell  me  of  your  readings 
and  your  literary  emotions.  These  latter  indeed — 
or  some  of  them,  as  you  express  them,  I  don't  think 
I  fully  share.  At  least  when  you  ask  me  if  I  don't 
feel  Dostoieff sky's  "mad  jumble,  that  flings  things 
down  in  a  heap,"  nearer  truth  and  beauty  than  the 
picking  and  composing  that  you  instance  in  Steven 
son,  I  reply  with  emphasis  that  I  feel  nothing  of 
the  sort,  and  that  the  older  I  grow  and  the  more 
I  go  the  more  sacred  to  me  do  picking  and  compos 
ing  become — though  I  naturally  don't  limit  myself 
to  Stevenson's  kind  of  the  same.  Don't  let  any 
one  persuade  you — there  are  plenty  of  ignorant 
and  fatuous  duffers  to  try  to  do  it — that  strenuous 
selection  and  comparison  are  not  the  very  essence 
of  art,  and  that  Form  is  [not]  substance  to  that 
degree  that  there  is  absolutely  no  substance  with 
out  it.  Form  a^one  takes,  and  holds  and  preserves, 
substance — saves  it  from  the  welter  of  helpless 
verbiage  that  we  swim  in  as  in  a  sea  of  tasteless 
tepid  pudding,  and  that  makes  one  ashamed  of  an 
art  capable  of  such  degradations.  Tolstoi  and  D. 
are  fluid  puddings,  though  not  tasteless,  because 
the  amount  of  their  own  minds  and  souls  in  solution 
in  the  broth  gives  it  savour  and  flavour,  thanks  to 
the  strong,  rank  quality  of  their  genius  and  their 
experience.  But  there  are  all  sorts  of  things  to  be 
said  of  them,  and  in  particular  that  we  see  how 
great  a  vice  is  their  lack  of  composition,  their  de 
fiance  of  economy  and  architecture,  directly  they 
are  emulated  and  imitated;  then,  as  subjects  of 
emulation,  models,  they  quite  give  themselves  away. 
There  is  nothing  so  deplorable  as  a  work  of  art 


£38       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1912 

with  a  leak  in  its  interest;  and  there  is  no  such  leak 
of  interest  as  through  commonness  of  form.  Its 
opposite,  the  found  (because  the  sought-for)  form 
is  the  absolute  citadel  and  tabernacle  of  interest. 
But  what  a  lecture  I  am  reading  you — though  a 
very  imperfect  one — which  you  have  drawn  upon 
yourself  (as  moreover  it  was  quite  right  you 
should. )  But  no  matter — I  shall  go  for  you  again 
— as  soon  as  I  find  you  in  a  lone  corner.  .  .  . 

Well,  dearest  Hugh,  love  me  a  little  better  (if 
you  can)  for  this  letter,  for  I  am  ever  so  fondly 
and  faithfully  yours, 

HENKY  JAMES. 


To  Miss  Rhoda  Broughton. 

Reform  Club,  Pall  Mall,  S.W. 

June  2nd,  1912. 
My  dear  Rhoda, 

Too  many  days  have  elapsed  since  I  got 
your  kind  letter — but  London  days  do  leak  away 
even  for  one  who  punily  tries  to  embank  and  eco 
nomise  them — as  I  do ;  they  fall,  as  it  were,  from — 
or,  better  still,  they  utterly  dissolve  in — my  nerve 
less  grasp.  In  that  enfeebled  clutch  the  pen  itself 
tends  to  waggle  and  drop ;  and  hence,  in  short,  my 
appearance  of  languor  over  the  inkstand.  This  is 
a  dark  moist  Sunday  a.m.,  and  I  sit  alone  in  the 
great  dim  solemn  library  of  this  Club  (Thackeray's 
Megatherium  or  whatever, )  and  say  to  myself  that 
the  conditions  now  at  last  ought  to  be  auspicious — 
though  indeed  that  merely  tends  to  make  me  but 
brood  inefficiently  over  the  transformations  of 
London  as  such  scenes  express  them  and  as  I  have 
seen  them  go  on  growing.  Now  at  last  the  place 
becomes  an  utter  void,  a  desert  peopled  with  ghosts, 
for  all  except  three  days  (about)  of  the  week — 
speaking  from  the  social  point  of  view.  The  old 


AET.  69  TO  MISS  RHODA  BROUGHTON   239 

Victorian  social  Sunday  is  dust  and  ashes,  and  a 
holy  stillness,  a  repudiating  blankness,  has  posses 
sion — which  however,  after  all,  has  its  merits  and 
its  conveniences  too.  .  .  .  Cadogan  Gardens,  mean 
while,  know  me  no  more — the  region  has  turned 
to  sadness,  as  if,  with  your  absence,  all  the  blinds 
were  down,  and  I  now  have  no  such  confident  and 
cordial  afternoon  refuge  left.  Very  promptly, 
next  winter,  the  blinds  must  be  up  again,  and  I 
will  keep  the  tryst.  I  have  been  talking  of  you 
this  evening  with  dear  W.  E.  Norris,  who  is  pay 
ing  one  of  his  much  interspaced  visits  to  town  and 
has  dined  with  me,  amiably,  without  other  attrac 
tions.  (This  letter,  begun  this  a.m.  and  inter 
rupted,  I  take  up  again  toward  midnight.)  .... 
Good-night,  however,  now  —  I  must  stagger 
(really  from  the  force  of  too  total  an  abstinence) 
to  my  never-unappreciated  couch.  (Norris  dined 
on  a  bottle  of  soda-water  and  I  on  no  drop  of  any 
thing.  )  I  pray  you  be  bearing  grandly  up,  and  I 
live  in  the  light  of  your  noble  fortitude.  One  is 
always  the  better  for  a  great  example,  and  I  am 
always  ail-faithfully  yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Henry  James,  junior. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
July  16th,  1912. 

Dearest  Harry, 

...  I  came  down  here  from  town  but  five  days 
ago,  and  feel  intensely,  after  so  long  an  absence, 
the  blest,  the  invaluable,  little  old  refuge-quality 
of  dear  L.  H.  at  this  and  kindred  seasons.  A 
tremendous  wave  of  heat  is  sweeping  over  the  land 
—passed  on  apparently  from  "your  side" — and  I 
left  London  a  fiery  furnace  and  the  Reform  Club 
a  feather  bed  on  top  of  one  in  the  same.  The 


240       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

visitation  still  goes  on  day  after  day,  but,  with 
immense  mitigation,  I  can  bear  it  here — where 
nothing  could  be  more  mitigating  than  my  for 
tunate  conditions. 

.  .  .  The  "working  expensively"  meanwhile 
signifies  for  me  simply  the  "literary  and  artistic," 
the  technical,  side  of  the  matter — the  fact  that  in 
doing  this  book  I  am  led,  by  the  very  process  and 
action  of  my  idiosyncrasy,  on  and  on  into  more 
evocation  and  ramification  of  old  images  and  con 
nections,  more  intellectual  and  moral  autobiog 
raphy  (though  all  closely  and,  as  I  feel  it,  exqui 
sitely  associated  and  involved,)  than  I  shall  quite 
know  what  to  do  with — to  do  with,  that  is,  in  this 
book  (I  shall  doubtless  be  able  to  use  rejected  or 
suppressed  parts  in  some  other  way. )  It's  my  more 
and  more  (or  long  since  established)  difficulty 
always,  that  I  have  to  project  and  do  a  great  deal 
in  order  to  choose  from  that,  after  the  fact,  what 
is  most  designated  and  supremely  urgent.  That  is 
a  costly  way  of  working,  as  regards  time,  material 
etc. — at  least  in  the  short  run.  In  the  long  run, 
and  "by  and  large,"  it,  I  think,  abundantly  justifies 
itself.  That  is  really  all  I  meant  to  convey  to  you 
and  to  your  mother  through  Bill — as  a  kind  of  pre 
caution  and  forewarning — for  your  inevitable  sense 
of  my  "slowness."  Of  course  too  I  have  had  pulls 
up  and  breaks,  sometimes  disheartening  ones, 
through  the  recurrence  of  bad  physical  conditions 
— and  am  still  liable,  strictly  speaking,  to  these. 
But  the  main  thing  to  say  about  these,  once  for  all, 
is  that  they  tend  steadily,  and  most  helpfully,  to 
diminish,  both  in  intensity  and  in  duration,  and 
that  I  have  really  now  reached  the  point  at  which 
the  successful  effort  to  work  really  helps  me  physi 
cally — to  say  nothing  of  course  of  (a  thousand 
times)  morally.  It  remains  true  that  I  do  worry 
about  the  money-question — by  nature  and  fate 
(since  I  was  born  worrying,  though  myself  much 


AET.  69    TO  HENRY  JAMES,  JUNIOR        241 

more  than  others!) — and  that  this  is  largely  the 
result  of  these  last  years  of  lapse  of  productive 
work  while  my  expenses  have  gone  more  or  less 
(while  I  was  with  you  all  in  America  less!)  ruth 
lessly  on.  But  of  this  it's  also  to  be  cheeringly  said 
that  I  have  only  to  be  successfully  and  continuously 
at  work  for  a  period  of  about  ten  days  for  it  all 
to  fall  into  the  background  altogether  (all  the 
worry,)  and  be  replaced  by  the  bravest  confidence 
of  calculation.  So  much  for  that  I  And  now,  for 
the  moment — for  this  post  at  least,  I  must  pull  up. 
Well  of  course  do  I  understand  that  with  your  big 
new  preoccupations  and  duties  close  at  hand  you 
mayn't  dream  of  a  move  in  this  direction,  and  I 
should  be  horrified  at  seeming  to  exert  the  least 
pressure  toward  your  even  repining  at  it.  More 
still  than  the  delight  of  seeing  you  will  be  that  of 
knowing  that  you  are  getting  into  close  quarters 
with  your  new  job.  I  repeat  that  you  have  no  idea 
of  the  good  this  will  do  me ! — as  to  which  I  sit  be 
tween  your  Mother  and  Peg,  clasping  a  hand  of 
each,  while  we  watch  your  every  movement  and 
gloat,  ecstatically,  over  you.  Oh,  give  my  love  so 
aboundingly  to  them,  and  to  your  grandmother, 
on  it  all ! 

Yours,  dearest  Harry,  more  affectionately  than 
ever, 

H.  J. 

To  E.  W.  CJiapman. 

Mrs.  Brookenham  is  of  course  the  mother  of  the  young 
heroine  of  Tli-e  Awkward  Age. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

July  17th,  1912. 
Dear  Mr.  Chapman, 

I  very  earnestly  beg  you  not  to  take  as  the 
measure  of  the  pleasure  given  me  by  your  letter 
the  inordinate  delay  of  this  acknowledgment. 


LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

That  admirable  communication,  reaching  me  at 
the  climax  of  the  London  June,  found  me  in  a  great 
tangle  of  difficulties  over  the  command  of  my  time 
and  general  conduct  of  my  correspondence  and 
other  obligations;  so  that  after  a  vain  invocation 
of  a  better  promptness  where  you  were  concerned, 
I  took  heart  from  the  fact  that  I  was  soon  to  be  at 
peace  down  here,  and  that  hence  I  should  be  able 
to  address  you  at  my  ease.  I  have  in  fact  been 
here  but  a  few  days,  and  my  slight  further  delay 
has  but  risen  from  the  fact  that  I  brought  .down 
with  me  so  many  letters  to  answer! — though  none 
of  them,  let  me  say,  begins  to  affect  me  with  the 
beauty  and  interest  of  yours. 

I  am  in  truth  greatly  touched,  deeply  moved  by 
it.  What  is  one  to  say  or  do  in  presence  of  an 
expression  so  generous  and  so  penetrating?  I  can 
only  listen  very  hard,  as  it  were,  taking  it  all  in 
with  bowed  head  and  clasped  hands,  not  to  say 
moist  eyes  even,  and  feel  that — well,  that  the 
whole  thing  has  been  after  all  worth  while  then. 
But  one  is  simply  in  the  hands  of  such  a  reader  and 
appreciator  as  you — one  yields  even  assentingly, 
gratefully  and  irresponsibly  to  the  current  of  your 
story  and  consistency  of  your  case.  I  feel  that  I 
really  don't  know  much — as  to  what  your  various 
particulars  imply — save  that  you  are  delightful, 
are  dazzling,  and  that  you  must  be  beautifully  right 
as  to  any  view  that  you  take  of  anything.  Let  me 
say,  for  all,  that  if  you  think  so,  so  it  must  be ;  for 
clearly  you  see  and  understand  and  discriminate 
— while  one  is  at  the  end  of  time  one's  self  so  very 
vague  about  many  things  and  only  conscious  of 
one's  general  virtuous  intentions  and  considerably 
strenuous  effort.  What  one  has  done  has  been 
conditioned  and  related  and  involved — so  to  say, 
fatalised — every  element  and  effort  jammed  up 
against  some  other  necessity  or  yawning  over  some 
consequent  void — and  with  anything  good  in  one's 


AET  69  TO  R.  W.  CHAPMAN  243 

achievement  or  fine  in  one's  faculty  conscious  all 
the  while  of  having  to  pay  by  this  and  that  and  the 
other  corresponding  dereliction  or  weakness.  You 
let  me  off,  however,  as  handsomely  as  you  draw 
me  on,  and  I  see  you  as  absolutely  right  about 
everything  and  want  only  to  square  with  yours  my 
impression:  that  is  to  say  any  but  that  of  my  being 
"dim"  in  respect  to  some  of  the  aspects,  possibly, 
of  Mrs.  Brookenham — which  I  don't  think  I  am: 
I  really  think  I  could  stand  a  stiff  cross-examina 
tion  on  that  lady.  But  this  is  a  detail,  and  I  can 
meet  you  only  in  a  large  and  fond  pre-submission 
on  the  various  points  you  make.  I  greatly  wish 
our  contact  at  Oxford  the  other  day  had  been  less 
hampered  and  reduced — so  that  it  was  impossible, 
in  the  event,  altogether,  to  get  within  hail  of  you 
at  Oriel.  But  I  have  promised  the  kind  President 
of  Magdalen  another  visit,  and  then  I  shall  insist 
on  being  free  to  come  and  see  you  if  you  will  let 
me.  I  cherish  your  letter  and  our  brief  talk  mean 
while  as  charmingly-coloured  lights  in  the  total  of 
that  shining  occasion.  What  power  to  irradiate 
has  Oxford  at  its  best! — and  as  it  was,  the  other 
week,  so  greatly  at  that  best.  I  think  the  grue 
some  little  errors  of  text  you  once  so  devotedly 
noted  for  me  in  some  of  my  original  volumes  don't 
for  the  most  part  survive  in  the  collective  edition 
— but  though  a  strenuous  I  am  a  constitutionally 
fallible  proof-reader,  and  I  am  almost  afraid  to 
assure  myself.  However,  I  must  more  or  less  face 
it,  and  I  am  yours,  dear  Mr.  Chapman,  all  grate 
fully  and  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


244       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1912 


To  Hugh  Walpole. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
Aug.  14th,  1912. 

...  I  rejoice  that  you  wander  to  such  good 
purpose — by  which  I  mean  nothing  more  exem 
plary  that  that  you  apparently  live  in  the  light  of 
curiosity  and  cheer.  I'm  very  glad  for  you  that 
these  gentle  passions  have  the  succulent  scene  of 
Munich  to  pasture  in.  I  haven't  been  there  for 
long  years — was  never  there  but  once  at  all,  but 
haven't  forgotten  how  genial  and  sympathetic  I 
found  it.  Drink  deep  of  every  impression  and 
have  a  lot  to  tell  me  when  the  prodigal  returns. 
I  love  travellers'  tales — especially  when  I  love  the 
traveller;  therefore  have  plenty  to  thrill  me  and  to 
confirm  that  passion  withal.  I  travel  no  further 
than  this,  and  never  shall  again;  but  it  serves  my 
lean  purposes,  or  most  of  them,  and  I'm  thankful 
to  be  able  to  do  so  much  and  to  feel  even  these  quiet 
and  wholesome  little  facts  about  me.  We're  hav 
ing  in  this  rude  climate  a  summer  of  particularly 
bad  and  brutal  manners — so  far  the  sweetness  of 
the  matter  fails;  but  I  get  out  in  the  lulls  of  the 
tempest  (it  does  nothing  but  rain  and  rage,)  and 
when  I'm  within,  my  mind  still  to  me  a  kingdom 
is,  however  dismembered  and  shrunken.  I  haven't 
seen  a  creature  to  talk  of  you  with — but  I  see  on 
these  terms  very  few  creatures  indeed;  none  worth 
speaking  of,  still  less  worth  talking  to.  Clearly 
you  move  still  in  the  human  maze — but  I  like  to 
think  of  you  there ;  may  it  be  long  before  you  find 
the  clue  to  the  exit.  You  say  nothing  of  any  re 
turn  to  these  platitudes,  so  I  suppose  you  are  to  be 
still  a  good  while  on  the  war-path;  but  when  you 
are  ready  to  smoke  the  pipe  of  peace  come  and  ask 
me  for  a  light.  It's  good  for  you  to  have  read 


AET.  69  TO  HUGH  WALPOLE  245 

Taine's  English  Lit.;  he  lacks  saturation,  lacks 
waste  of  acquaintance,  but  sees  with  a  magnificent 
objectivity,  reacts  with  an  energy  to  match,  ex 
presses  with  a  splendid  amplitude,  and  has  just  the 
critical  value,  I  think,  of  being  so  off,  so  far  (given 
such  an  intellectual  reach,)  and  judging  and  feel 
ing  in  so  different  an  air.  It's  charming  to  me  to 
hear  that  The  Ambassadors  have  again  engaged 
and  still  beguile  you;  it  is  probably  a  very  packed 
production,  with  a  good  deal  of  one  thing  within 
another;  I  remember  sitting  on  it,  when  I  wrote 
it,  with  that  intending  weight  and  presence  with 
which  you  probably  often  sit  in  these  days  on  your 
trunk  to  make  the  lid  close  and  all  your  trousers 
and  boots  go  in.  I  remember  putting  in  a  good 
deal  about  Chad  and  Strether,  or  Strether  and 
Chad,  rather;  and  am  not  sure  that  I  quite  under 
stand  what  in  that  connection  you  miss — I  mean 
in  the  way  of  what  could  be  there.  The  whole  thing 
is  of  course,  to  intensity,  a  picture  of  relations— 
and  among  them  is,  though  not  on  the  first  line, 
the  relation  of  Strether  to  Chad.  The  relation  of 
Chad  to  Strether  is  a  limited  and  according  to  my 
method  only  implied  and  indicated  thing,  suffi 
ciently  there;  but  Strether's  to  Chad  consists 
above  all  in  a  charmed  and  yearning  and  wonder 
ing  sense,  a  dimly  envious  sense,  of  all  Chad's  young 
living  and  easily-taken  other  relations;  other  not 
only  than  the  one  to  him,  but  than  the  one  to  Mme 
de  Vionnet  and  whoever  else;  this  very  sense,  and 
the  sense  of  Chad,  generally,  is  a  part,  a  large  part, 
of  poor  dear  Strether's  discipline,  development,  ad 
venture  and  general  history.  All  of  it  that  is  of 
my  subject  seems  to  me  given — given  by  dramatic 
projection,  as  all  the  rest  is  given:  how  can  you 
say  I  do  anything  so  foul  and  abject  as  to  "state"? 
You  deserve  that  I  should  condemn  you  to  read 
the  book  over  once  again!  However,  instead  of 
this  I  only  impose  that  you  come  down  to  me,  on 


246       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

your  return,  for  a  couple  of  days — when  we  can 
talk  better.  I  hold  you  to  the  heart  of  your  truest 
old 

H.  J. 


To  Edmund  Gosse. 

With  regard  to  the  "dread  effulgence  of  their  Lord 
ships"  it  will  be  remembered  that  Mr.  Gosse  was  at  this 
time  Librarian  of  the  House  of  Lords.  The  allusion  at 
the  end  is  to  Mr.  Gosse's  article  on  Swinburne  in  the 
Dictionary  of  National  Biography,  further  dealt  with  in 
the  next  letter. 

Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

7th  October,   1912. 
My  dear  Gosse, 

Forgive  this  cold-blooded  machinery — for 
I  have  been  of  late  a  stricken  man,  and  still  am 
not  on  my  legs;  though  judging  it  a  bit  urgent  to 
briefly  communicate  with  you  on  a  small  practical 
matter.  I  have  had  quite  a  Devil  of  a  summer,  a 
very  bad  and  damnable  July  and  August,  through 
a  renewal  of  an  ailment  that  I  had  regarded  as 
a  good  deal  subdued,  but  that  descended  upon  me 
in  force  just  after  I  last  saw  you  and  then  abso 
lutely  raged  for  many  weeks.  (I  allude  to  a  most 
deplorable  tendency  to  chronic  pectoral,  or,  more 
specifically,  anginal,  pain;  which,  however,  I  finally, 
about  a  month  ago,  got  more  or  less  the  better 
of,  in  a  considerably  reassuring  way.)  I  was  but 
beginning  to  profit  by  this  comparative  reprieve 
when  I  was  smitten  with  a  violent  attack  of  the 
atrocious  affection  known  as  "Shingles" — my  im 
pression  of  the  nature  of  which  had  been  vague 
and  inconsiderate,  but  to  the  now  grim  shade  of 
which  I  take  off  my  hat  in  the  very  abjection  of 
respect.  It  has  been  a  very  horrible  visitation,  but 
I  am  getting  better;  only  I  am  still  in  bed  and  have 


AET.  69  TO  EDMUND  GOSSE  247 

to  appeal  to  you  in  this  graceless  mechanical  way. 
My  appeal  bears  on  a  tiny  and  trivial  circumstance, 
the  fact  that  I  have  practically  concluded  an  agree 
ment  for  a  Flat  which  I  saw  and  liked  and  seemed 
to  find  within  my  powers  before  leaving  town  (No. 
21  Carlyle  Mansions,  Cheyne  Walk,  S.W.)  and 
which  I  am  looking  to  for  a  more  convenient  and 
secure  basis  of  regularly  wintering  in  London,  for 
the  possibly  brief  remainder  of  my  days,  than  any 
I  have  for  a  long  time  had.  I  want,  in  response  to 
a  letter  just  received  from  the  proprietors  of  the 
same,  to  floor  that  apparently  rather  benighted 
and  stupid  body,  who  are  restless  over  the  question 
of  a  "social  reference"  (in  addition  to  my  reference 
to  my  Bankers),  by  a  regular  knock-down  produc 
tion  of  the  most  eminent  and  exalted  tie  I  can 
produce;  whereby  I  have  given  them  your  distin 
guished  name  as  that  of  a  voucher  for  my  respecta 
bility — as  distinguished  from  my  solvency;  for 
which  latter  I  don't  hint  that  you  shall,  however 
dimly,  engage!  So  I  have  it  on  my  conscience, 
you  see,  to  let  you  know  of  the  liberty  I  have  thus 
taken  with  you;  this  on  the  chance  of  their  really 
applying  to  you  (which  some  final  saving  sense  of 
their  being  rather  silly  may  indeed  keep  them  from 
doing.)  If  they  do,  kindly,  very  kindly,  abound 
in  my  sense  to  the  extent  of  intimating  to  them 
that  not  to  know  me  famed  for  my  respectability 
is  scarcely  to  be  respectable  themselves!  That  is 
all  I  am  able  to  trouble  you  with  now.  I  am  as 
yet  a  poor  thing,  more  even  the  doctor's  than  mine 
own ;  but  shall  come  round  presently  and  shall  then 
be  able  to  give  you  a  better  account  of  myself. 
There  is  no  question  of  my  getting  into  the  Flat 
in  question  till  some  time  in  January;  I  don't  get 
possession  till  Dec.  25th,  but  this  preliminary  has 
had  to  be  settled.  Don't  be  burdened  to  write;  I 
know  your  cares  are  on  the  eve  of  beginning  again, 
and  how  heavy  they  may  presently  be.  I  have  only 


248       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

wanted  to  create  for  our  ironic  intelligence  the 
harmless  pleasure  of  letting  loose  a  little,  in  a 
roundabout  way,  upon  the  platitude  of  the  City 
and  West  End  Properties  Limited,  the  dread  efful 
gence  of  their  Lordships;  the  latter  being  the  light 
and  you  the  transparent  lantern  that  my  shaky 
hand  holds  up.  More,  as  I  say,  when  that  hand  is 
less  shaky.  I  hope  all  your  intimate  news  is  good, 
and  am  only  waiting  for  the  new  vol.  of  the  Dic 
tionary  with  your  Swinburne,  which  a  word  from 
Sidney  Lee  has  assured  me  is  of  maximum  value. 
All  faithful  greeting. 

Yours  always, 

HENKY  JAMES. 


To  Edmund  Gosse. 

Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

October  10th,  1912. 
My  dear  Gosse, 

Your  good  letter  of  this  morning  helps  to 
console  and  sustain.  One  really  needs  any  lift  one 
can  get  after  this  odious  experience.  I  am  emerg 
ing,  but  it  is  slow,  and  I  feel  much  ravaged  and 
bedimmed.  Fortunately  these  days  have  an  in 
trinsic  beauty — of  the  rarest  and  charmingest  here ; 
and  I  try  to  fling  myself  on  the  breast  of  Nature 
(though  I  don't  mean  by  that  fling  myself  and  my 
poor  blisters  and  scars  on  the  dew-sprinkled  lawn) 
and  forget,  imperfectly,  that  precious  hours  and 
days  tumble  unrestrained  into  the  large  round,  the 
deep  dark,  the  ever  open,  hole  of  sacrifice.  I  am 
almost  afraid  my  silly  lessors  of  the  Chelsea  Flat 
won't  apply  to  you  for  a  character  of  me  if  they 
haven't  done  so  by  now;  afraid  because  the  idea 
of  a  backhander  from  you,  reaching  them  straight, 
would  so  gratify  my  sense  of  harmless  sport.  It 


AET.  69  TO  EDMUND  GOSSE  249 

was  only  a  question  of  a  word  in  case  they  should 
appeal ;  kindly  don't  dream  of  any  such  if  they  let 
the  question  rest  (in  spite  indeed  of  their  having 
intimated  that  they  would  thoroughly  thresh  it 
out.) 

I  received  with  pleasure  the  small  Swinburne — 
of  so  chaste  and  charming  a  form;  the  perusal  of 
which  lubricated  yesterday  two  or  three  rough 
hours.  Your  composition  bristles  with  items  and 
authenticities  even  as  a  tight  little  cushion  with  in 
dividual  pins ;  and,  I  take  it,  is  everything  that  such 
a  contribution  to  such  a  cause  should  be  but  for 
the  not  quite  ample  enough  ( for  my  appetite )  con 
clusive  estimate  or  appraisement.  I  know  how 
little,  far  too  little,  to  my  sense,  that  element  has 
figured  in  those  pages  in  general ;  but  I  should  have 
liked  to  see  you,  in  spite  of  this,  formulate  and 
resume  a  little  more  the  creature's  character  and 
genius,  the  aspect  and  effect  of  his  general  per 
formance.  You  will  say  I  have  a  morbid  hankering 
for  what  a  Dictionary  doesn't  undertake,  what  a 
Sidney  Lee  perhaps  even  doesn't  offer  space  for. 
I  admit  that  I  talk  at  my  ease — so  far  as  ease  is 
in  my  line  just  now.  Very  charming  and  happy 
Lord  Redesdale's  contribution — showing,  afresh, 
how  everything  about  such  a  being  as  S.  becomes 
and  remains  interesting.  Prettily  does  Redesdale 

write — and  prettily  will have  winced ;  if  indeed 

the  pretty  even  in  that  form,  or  the  wincing  in  any, 
could  be  conceived  of  him. 

I  have  received  within  a  day  or  two  dear  old 
George  Meredith's  Letters;  and,  though  I  haven't 
been  able  yet  very  much  to  go  into  them,  I  catch 
their  emanation  of  something  so  admirable  and, 
on  the  whole,  so  baffled  and  tragic.  We  must  have 
more  talk  of  them — and  also  of  Wells'  book,  with 
which  however  I  am  having  extreme  difficulty. 
I  am  not  so  much  struck  with  its  hardness  as  with 
its  weakness  and  looseness,  the  utter  going  by  the 


250       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

board  of  any  real  self-respect  of  composition  and 
of  expression.  .  .  .  What  lacerates  me  perhaps 
most  of  all  in  the  Meredith  volumes  is  the  mean 
ness  and  poorness  of  editing — the  absence  of  any 
attempt  to  project  the  Image  (of  character,  tem 
per,  quantity  and  quality  of  mind,  general  size  and 
sort  of  personality)  that  such  a  subject  cries  aloud 
for;  to  the  shame  of  our  purblind  criticism.  For 
such  a  Vividness  to  go  a-begging! — .  .  .  When 
one  thinks  of  what  Vividness  would  in  France,  in 
such  a  case,  have  leaped  to  its  feet  in  commemo 
rative  and  critical  response !  But  there  is  too  much 
to  say,  and  I  am  able,  in  this  minor  key,  to  say 
too  little.  We  must  be  at  it  again.  I  was  afraid 
your  wife  was  having  another  stretch  of  the  dark 
valley  to  tread — I  had  heard  of  your  brother-in- 
law's  illness.  May  peace  somehow  come!  I  re- 
greet  and  regret  you  all,  and  am  all  faithfully 
yours, 

HENKY  JAMES. 


To  Edmund  Gosse. 

Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

October  llth,  1912. 
My  dear  Gosse, 

Let  me  thank  you  again,  on  this  lame  basis 
though  I  still  be,  for  the  charming  form  of  your 
news  of  your  having  helped  me  with  my  fastidious 
friends  of  the  Flat.  Clearly,  they  were  to  be  hurled 
to  their  doom;  for  the  proof  of  your  having,  with 
your  potent  finger,  pressed  the  merciless  spring, 
arrives  this  morning  in  the  form  of  a  quite  obsequi 
ous  request  that  I  will  conclude  our  transaction 
by  a  signature.  This  I  am  doing,  and  I  am  mean 
while  lost  in  fond  consideration  of  the  so  suscep 
tible  spot  (susceptible  to  profanation)  that  I  shall 


AET.  69  TO  EDMUND  GOSSE  251 

have  reached  only  after  such  purgations.     I  thank 
you  most  kindly  for  settling  the  matter. 

Very  interesting  your  note — in  the  matter  of 
George  Meredith.  Yes,  I  spent  much  of  yester 
day  reading  the  Letters,  and  quite  agree  with  your 
judgment  of  them  on  the  score  of  their  rather 
marked  non-illustration  of  his  intellectual  wealth. 
They  make  one,  it  seems  to  me,  enormously  like 
him — but  that  one  had  always  done;  and  the  series 
to  Morley,  and  in  a  minor  degree  to  Maxse,  con 
tain  a  certain  number  of  rare  and  fine  things,  many 
beautiful  felicities  of  wit  and  vision.  But  the  whole 
aesthetic  range,  understanding  that  in  a  big  sense, 
strikes  me  as  meagre  and  short;  he  clearly  lived 
even  less  than  one  had  the  sense  of  his  doing  in  the 
world  of  art — in  that  whole  divine  preoccupation, 
that  whole  intimate  restlessness  of  projection  and 
perception.  And  this  is  the  more  striking  that  he 
appears  to  have  been  far  more  communicative  and 
overflowing  on  the  whole  ground  of  what  he  was 
doing  in  prose  or  verse  than  I  had  at  all  supposed; 
to  have  lived  and  wrought  with  all  those  doors 
more  open  and  publicly  slamming  and  creaking 
on  their  hinges,  as  it  were,  than  had  consorted 
with  one's  sense,  and  with  the  whole  legend,  of  his 
intellectual  solitude.  His  whole  case  is  full  of 
anomalies,  however,  and  these  volumes  illustrate 
it  even  by  the  light  they  throw  on  a  certain  poor 
ness  of  range  in  most  of  his  correspondents.  Save 
for  Morley  (et  encore!)  most  of  them  figure  here 
as  folk  too  little  a  la  hauteur — !  though,  of  course, 
a  man,  even  of  his  distinction,  can  live  and  deal 
but  with  those  who  are  within  his  radius.  He  was 
starved,  to  my  vision,  in  many  ways — and  that 
makes  him  but  the  more  nobly  pathetic.  In  fine 
the  whole  moral  side  of  him  throws  out  some  splen 
didly  clear  lights — while  the  "artist,"  the  secondary 
Shakespeare,  remains  curiously  dim.  Your  miss 
ing  any  letters  to  me  rests  on  a  misconception  of 


LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

my  very  limited,  even  though  extremely  delightful 
to  me,  active  intercourse  with  him.  I  had  with 
him  no  sense  of  reciprocity;  he  remained  for  me 
always  a  charming,  a  quite  splendid  and  rather 
strange,  Exhibition,  so  content  itself  to  be  one,  all 
genially  and  glitteringly,  but  all  exclusively,  that 
I  simply  sat  before  him  till  the  curtain  fell,  and 
then  came  again  when  I  felt  I  should  find  it  up. 
But  I  never  rang  it  up,  never  felt  any  charge  on 
me  to  challenge  him  by  invitation  or  letter.  But 
one  or  two  notes  from  him  did  I  find  when  Will 
Meredith  wrote  to  me ;  and  these,  though  perfectly 
charming  and  kind,  I  have  preferred  to  keep  un- 
ventilated.  However,  I  am  little  enough  observing 
that  same  discretion  to  you — !  I  slowly  mend,  but 
it's  absurd  how  far  I  feel  I've  to  come  back  from. 
Sore  and  strained  has  the  horrid  business  left  me. 
But  nevertheless  I  hope,  and  in  fact  almost 
propose. 

Yours  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Edmund  Gosse. 

The  Morning  Post  article  was  a  review  by  Mr.  Gosse 
of  the  Letters  of  George  Meredith, 

Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

October  13th,  1912. 
My  dear  Gosse, 

This  is  quite  a  feverish  flurry  of  corre 
spondence — but  please  don't  for  a  moment  feel  the 
present  to  entail  on  you  the  least  further  charge: 
I  only  want  to  protest  against  your  imputation  of 
sarcasm  to  my  figure  of  the  pin-cushion  and  the 
pins — and  this  all  genially:  that  image  having 
represented  to  myself  the  highest  possible  tribute 


AET.  69  TO  EDMUND  GOSSE  253 

to  your  biographic  facture.  What  I  particularly 
meant  was  that  probably  no  such  tense  satin  slope 
had  ever  before  grown,  within  the  same  number  of 
square  inches,  so  dense  a  little  forest  of  discrimi-. 
nated  upright  stems!  There  you  are,  and  I  hear 
with  immense  satisfaction  of  the  prospect  of  an 
other  crop  yet — this  time,  I  infer,  on  larger  ground 
and  with  beautiful  alleys  and  avenues  and  vistas 
piercing  the  plantation. 

I  rejoice  alike  to  know  of  the  M.P.  article,  on 
which  I  shall  be  able  to  put  my  hand  here  betimes 
tomorrow.  I  can't  help  wishing  I  had  known  of 
it  a  little  before — I  should  have  liked  so  to  bring, 
in  time,  a  few  of  my  gleanings  to  your  mill.  But 
evidently  we  are  quite  under  the  same  general  im 
pression,  and  your  point  about  the  dear  man's  con- 
foundingness  of  allusion  to  the  products  of  the 
French  spirit  is  exactly  what  one  had  found  one 
self  bewilderedly  noting.  There  are  two  or  three 
rather  big  felicities  and  sanities  of  judgment  (in 
this  order;)  in  one  place  a  fine  strong  rightly-dis 
criminated  apprehension  and  characterisation  of 
Victor  Hugo.  But  for  the  rest  such  queer  lapses 
and  wanderings  wild;  with  the  striking  fact,  above 
all,  that  he  scarcely  once  in  the  2  volumes  makes 
use  of  a  French  phrase  or  ventures  on  a  French 
passage  (as  in  sundry  occasional  notes  of  acknowl 
edgment  and  other  like  flights,)  without  some 
marked  inexpertness  or  gaucherie.  Three  or  four 
of  these  things  are  even  painful — they  cause  one 
uncomfortably  to  flush.  And  he  appears  to  have 
gone  to  France,  thanks  to  his  second  wife's  con 
nections  there,  putting  in  little  visits  and  having 
contacts,  of  a  scattered  sort,  much  oftener  than  I 
supposed.  He  "went  abroad,"  for  that  matter, 
during  certain  years,  a  good  deal  more  than  I  had 
fancied  him  able  to — which  is  an  observation  I  find, 
even  now,  of  much  comfort.  But  one's  impres 
sion  of  his  lack  of  what  it's  easiest  to  call,  most 


254       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

comprehensively,  aesthetic  curiosity,  is,  I  take  it, 
exactly  what  you  will  have  expressed  your  sense  of. 
He  speaks  a  couple  of  times  of  greatly  admiring 
a  novel  of  Daudet's,  "Numa  Roumestan,"  with 
the  remark,  twice  over,  that  he  has  never  "liked" 
any  of  the  others;  he  only  "likes"  this  one!  The 
tone  is  of  the  oddest,  coming  from  a  man  of  the 
craft — even  though  the  terms  on  which  he  himself 
was  of  the  craft  remain  so  peculiar — and  such  as 
there  would  be  so  much  more  to  say  about.  To  a 
fellow-novelist  who  could  read  Daudet  at  all  (and 
I  can't  imagine  his  not,  in  such  a  relation,  being 
read  with  curiosity,  with  critical  appetite)  "Numa" 
might  very  well  appear  to  stand  out  from  the 
others  as  the  finest  flower  of  the  same  method;  but 
not  to  take  it  as  one  of  them,  or  to  take  them  as 
of  its  family  and  general  complexion,  is  to  reduce 
"liking"  and  not-liking  to  the  sort  of  use  that  a 
spelling-out  schoolgirl  might  make  of  them.  Most 
of  all  (if  I  don't  bore  you)  I  think  one  particular 
observation  counts — or  has  counted  for  me ;  the  fact 
of  the  non-occurrence  of  one  name,  the  one  that 
aesthetic  curiosity  would  have  seemed  scarce  able, 
in  any  real  overflow,  to  have  kept  entirely  shy  of; 
that  of  Balzac,  I  mean,  which  Meredith  not  only 
never  once,  even,  stumbles  against,  but  so  much  as 
seems  to  stray  within  possible  view  of.  Of  course 
one  would  never  dream  of  measuring  "play  of 
mind,"  in  such  a  case,  by  any  man's  positive  men 
tions,  few  or  many,  of  the  said  B.;  yet  when  he 
isn't  ever  mentioned  a  certain  desert  effect  comes 
from  it  (at  least  it  does  to  thirsty  me)  and  I  make 
all  sorts  of  little  reflections.  But  I  am  making  too 
many  now,  and  they  are  loose  and  casual,  and  you 
mustn't  mind  them  for  the  present;  all  the  more 
that  I'm  sorry  to  say  I  am  still  on  shaky  ground 
physically;  this  odious  ailment  not  being,  appar 
ently,  a  thing  that  spends  itself  and  clears  off,  but 
a  beastly  poison  which  hangs  about,  even  after  the 


AET.  69  TO  EDMUND  GOSSE  255 

most  copious  eruption  and  explosion,  and  suggests 
dismal  relapses  and  returns  to  bed.  I  am  really 
thinking  of  this  latter  form  of  relief  even  now- 
after  having  been  up  but  for  a  couple  of  hours. 
However,  don't  "mind"  me;  even  if  I'm  in  for  a 
real  relapse  some  of  the  sting  will,  I  trust,  have 
been  drawn. 

Yours  rather  wearily, 

HENRY  JAMES. 

P.S.  I  am  having,  it  appears — Sunday,  2  p.m. 
— to  tumble  back  into  bed;  though  I  rose  but 
at  10! 


To  'Edmund  Gosse. 
Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
October  15th,  1912. 

My  dear  Gosse, 

Here  I  am  at  it  again — for  I  can't  not  thank 
you  for  your  two  notes  last  night  and  this  morn 
ing  received.  Your  wife  has  all  my  tenderest 
sympathy  in  the  matter  of  what  the  loss  of  her 
Brother  cost  her.  Intimately  will  her  feet  have 
learnt  to  know  these  ways.  So  it  goes  on  till  we 
have  no  one  left  to  lose — as  I  felt,  with  force,  two 
summers  ago,  when  I  lost  my  two  last  Brothers 
within  two  months  and  became  sole  survivor  of  all 
my  Father's  house.  I  lay  my  hand  very  gently 
on  our  friend. 

With  your  letter  of  last  night  came  the  Corn- 
hill  with  the  beautifully  done  little  Swinburne 
chapter.  What  a  "grateful"  subject,  somehow,  in 
every  way,  that  gifted  being — putting  aside  even, 
I  mean,  the  value  of  his  genius.  He  is  grateful 
by  one  of  those  arbitrary  values  that  dear  G.M., 
for  instance,  doesn't  positively  command,  in  pro- 


256      LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

portion  to  his  intrinsic  weight;  and  who  can  say 
quite  why?  Charming  and  vivid  and  authentic, 
at  any  rate,  your  picture  of  that  occasion;  to  say 
nothing  of  your  evocation,  charged  with  so  fine 
a  Victorian  melancholy,  of  Swinburne's  time  at 
Vichy  with  Leighton,  Mrs.  Sartoris  and  Richard 
Burton;  what  a  felicitous  and  enviable  image  they 
do  make  together — and  what  prodigious  discourse 
must  even  more  particularly  have  ensued  when  S. 
and  B.  sat  up  late  together  after  the  others!  Dis 
tinct  to  me  the  memory  of  a  Sunday  afternoon  at 
Flaubert's  in  the  winter  of  '75-'76,  when  Maupas 
sant,  still  inedit;  but  always  "round,"  regaled  me 
with  a  fantastic  tale,  irreproducible  here,  of  the 
relations  between  two  Englishmen,  each  other,  and 
their  monkey !  A  picture  the  details  of  which  have 
faded  for  me,  but  not  the  lurid  impression.  Most 
deliciously  Victorian  that  too — I  bend  over  it  all 
so  yearningly;  and  to  the  effect  of  my  hoping 
"ever  so"  that  you  are  in  conscious  possession  of 
material  for  a  series  of  just  such  other  chapters  in 
illustration  of  S.,  each  a  separate  fine  flower  for 
a  vivid  even  if  loose  nosegay. 

I'm  much  interested  by  your  echo  of  Haldane's 
remarks,  or  whatever,  about  G.  M.  Only  the  diffi 
culty  is,  of  a  truth,  somehow,  that  ces  messieurs, 
he  and  Morley  and  Maxse  and  Stephen,  and  two 
or  three  others,  Lady  Ulrica  included,  really  never 
knew  much  more  where  they  were,  on  all  the 
"aesthetic"  ground,  as  one  for  convenience  calls  it, 
than  the  dear  man  himself  did,  or  where  he  was; 
so  that  the  whole  history  seems  a  record  somehow 
(so  far  as  "art  and  letters"  are  in  question)  of  a 
certain  absence  of  point  on  the  part  of  every  one 
concerned  in  it.  Still,  it  abides  with  us,  I  think, 
that  Meredith  was  an  admirable  spirit  even  if  not 
an  entire  mind;  he  throws  out,  to  my  sense,  splen 
did  great  moral  and  ethical,  what  he  himself  would 
call  "spiritual,"  lights,  and  has  again  and  again 


AET.  69  TO  EDMUND  GOSSE  257 

big  strong  whiffs  of  manly  tone  and  clear  judg 
ment.  The  fantastic  and  the  mannered  in  him  were 
as  nothing,  I  think,  to  the  intimately  sane  and 
straight;  just  as  the  artist  was  nothing  to  the  good 
citizen  and  the  liberalised  bourgeois.  However, 
lead  me  not  on!  I  thank  you  ever  so  kindly  for 
the  authenticity  of  your  word  about  these  beastly 
recurrences  (of  my  disorder.)  I  feel  you  floated 
in  confidence  on  the  deep  tide  of  Philip's  experi 
ence  and  wisdom.  Still,  I  am  trying  to  keep 
mainly  out  of  bed  again  (after  48  hours  just  re- 
newedly  spent  in  it.)  But  on  these  terms  you'll 
wish  me  back  there — and  I'm  yours  with  no  word 
more, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  'Edmund  Gosse. 

Mr.  Gosse  had  asked  for  further  details  with  regard 
to  Maupassant's  tale,  referred  to  in  the  previous  letter. 
The  legend  in  question  was  connected  with  Etretat  and 
the  odd  figure  of  George  E.  J.  Powell,  Swinburne's  host 
there  during  the  summer  of  1868,  and  more  than  once 
afterwards. 

Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

October  17th,  1912. 
My  dear  Gosse, 

It's  very  well  invoking  a  close  to  this  raging 
fever  of  a  correspondence  when  you  have  such  arts 
for  sending  and  keeping  the  temperature  up!  I 
feel  in  the  presence  of  your  letter  last  night  re 
ceived  that  the  little  machine  thrust  under  one's 
tongue  may  well  now  register  or  introduce  the 
babble  of  a  mind  "affected";  though  interestingly 
so,  let  me  add,  since  it  is  indeed  a  thrill  to  think 
that  I  am  perhaps  the  last  living  depositary  of 
Maupassant's  wonderful  confidence  or  legend.  I 


258       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1912 

really  believe  myself  the  last  survivor  of  those  then 
surrounding  Gustave  Flaubert.  I  shrink  a  good 
deal  at  the  same  time,  I  confess,  under  the  burden 
of  an  honour  "unto  which  I  was  not  born";  or, 
more  exactly,  hadn't  been  properly  brought  up  or 
pre-admonished  and  pre-inspired  to.  I  pull  my 
self  together,  I  invoke  fond  memory,  as  you  urge 
upon  me,  and  I  feel  the  huge  responsibility  of  my 
office  and  privilege;  but  at  the  same  time  I  must 
remind  you  of  certain  inevitable  weaknesses  in  my 
position,  certain  essential  infirmities  of  my  rela 
tion  to  the  precious  fact  (meaning  by  the  precious 
fact  Maupassant's  having,  in  that  night  of  time 
and  that  general  failure  of  inspiring  prescience, 
so  remarkably  regaled  me. )  You  will  see  in  a  mo 
ment  everything  that  was  wanting  to  make  me  the 
conscious  recipient  of  a  priceless  treasure.  You 
will  see  in  fact  how  little  I  could  have  any  of  the 
right  mental  preparation.  I  didn't  in  the  least 
know  that  M.  himself  was  going  to  be  so  remark 
able;  I  didn't  in  the  least  know  that  I  was  going 
to  be;  I  didn't  in  the  least  know  (and  this  was 
above  all  most  frivolous  of  me)  that  you  were  go 
ing  to  be ;  I  didn't  even  know  that  the  monkey  was 
going  to  be,  or  even  realise  the  peculiar  degree  and 
nuance  of  the  preserved  lustre  awaiting  ces  mes 
sieurs,  the  three  taken  together.  Guy's  story  (he 
was  only  known  as  "Guy"  then)  dropped  into  my 
mind  but  as  an  unrelated  thing,  or  rather  as  one 
related,  and  indeed  with  much  intensity,  to  the 
peculiarly  "rum,"  weird,  macabre  and  unimagina 
ble  light  in  which  the  interesting,  or  in  other  words 
the  delirious,  in  English  conduct  and  in  English 
character,  are — or  were  especially  then — viewed 
in  French  circles  sufficiently  self-respecting  to  have 
views  on  the  general  matter  at  all,  or  in  other  words 
among  the  truly  refined  and  enquiring.  "Here 
they  are  at  it!"  I  remember  that  as  my  main  in 
ward  comment  on  Maupassant's  vivid  little  history; 


AET.  69  TO  EDMUND  GOSSE  259 

which  was  thus  thereby  somehow  more  vivid  to  me 
about  him,  than  about  either  our  friends  or  the 
Monkey ;  as  to  whom,  as  I  say,  I  didn't  in  the  least 
foresee  this  present  hour  of  arraignment! 

At  the  same  time  I  think  I'm  quite  prepared 
to  say,  in  fact  absolutely,  that  of  the  two  versions 
of  the  tale,  the  two  quite  distinct  ones,  to  which 
you  attribute  a  mystic  and  separate  currency  over 
there,  Maupassant's  story  to  me  was  essentially 
Version  No.  I.  It  wasn't  at  all  the  minor,  the 
comparatively  banal  anecdote.  Really  what  has 
remained  with  me  is  but  the  note  of  two  elements — 
that  of  the  Monkey's  jealousy,  and  that  of  the 
Monkey's  death;  how  brought  about  the  latter  1 
can't  at  all  at  this  time  of  day  be  sure,  though  I 
am  haunted  as  with  the  vague  impression  that  the 
poor  beast  figured  as  having  somehow  destroyed 
himself,  committed  suicide  through  the  separate  in- 
juria  formae.  The  third  person  in  the  fantastic 
complication  was  either  a  young  man  employed  as 
servant  (within  doors)  or  one  employed  as  boat 
man,  and  in  either  case  I  think  English;  and  some 
thin  ghost  of  an  impression  abides  with  me  that 
the  "jealousy"  was  more  on  the  Monkey's  part 
toward  him  than  on  his  toward  the  Monkey;  with 
which  the  circumstance  that  the  Death  I  seem 
most  (yet  so  dimly)  to  disembroil  is  simply  and 
solely,  or  at  least  predominantly,  that  of  the  resent 
ful  and  impassioned  beast:  who  hovers  about  me 
as  having  seen  the  other  fellow,  the  jeune  anglais 
or  whoever,  installed  on  the  scene  after  he  was  more 
or  less  lord  of  it,  and  so  invade  his  province.  You 
see  how  light  and  thin  and  confused  are  my  data! 
How  I  wish  I  had  known  or  guessed  enough  in 
advance  to  be  able  to  oblige  you  better  now:  not 
a  stone  then  would  I  have  left  unturned,  not  an  i 
would  I  have  allowed  to  remain  undotted;  no 
analysis  or  exhibition  of  the  national  character  (of 
either  of  the  national  characters)  so  involved  would 


S60      LETTERS  OP  HENRY  JAMES      1912 

I  have  failed  to  catch  in  the  act.  Yet  I  do  so  far 
serve  you,  it  strikes  me,  as  to  be  clear  about  this — 
that,  whatever  turn  the  denouement  took,  which 
ever  life  was  most  luridly  sacrificed  (of  those  of 
the  two  humble  dependants),  the  drama  had  essen 
tially  been  one  of  the  affections,  the  passions,  the 
last  cocasserie,  with  each  member  of  the  quartette 
involved!  Disentangle  it  as  you  can — I  think 
Browning  alone  could  really  do  so!  Does  this  at 
any  rate — the  best  I  can  do  for  you — throw  any 
sufficient  light?  I  recognise  the  importance,  the 
historic  bearing  and  value,  of  the  most  perfectly 
worked-out  view  of  it.  Such  a  pity,  with  this,  that 
as  I  recover  the  fleeting  moments  from  across  the 
long  years  it  is  my  then  active  figuration  of  the 
so  tremendously  averti  young  Guy's  intellectual, 
critical,  vital,  experience  of  the  subject-matter  that 
hovers  before  me,  rather  than  my  comparatively 
detached  curiosity  as  to  the  greater  or  less  origi 
nality  of  ces  messieurs! — even  though,  with  this, 
highly  original  they  would  appear  to  have  been. 
I  seem  moreover  to  mix  up  the  occasion  a  little  (I 
mean  the  occasion  of  that  confidence)  with  another, 
still  more  dim,  on  which  the  so  communicative  Guy 
put  it  to  me,  apropos  of  I  scarce  remember  what, 
that  though  he  had  remained  quite  outside  of  the 
complexity  I  have  been  glancing  at,  some  jeune 
anglais,  in  some  other  connection,  had  sought  to 
draw  him  into  some  scarcely  less  fantastic  or  ab 
normal  one,  to  the  necessary  determination  on  his 
part  of  some  prompt  and  energetic  action  to  the 
contrary:  the  details  of  which  now  escape  me — 
it's  all  such  a  golden  blur  of  old-time  Flaubert- 
ism  and  Goncourtism!  How  many  more  strange 
flowers  one  might  have  gathered  up  and  preserved ! 
There  was  something  from  Goncourt  one  after 
noon  about  certain  Swans  (they  seem  to  run  so 
to  the  stranger  walks  of  the  animal  kingdom!)  who 
figured  in  the  background  of  some  prodigious 


AET.  69  TO  EDMUND  GOSSE  261 

British  existence,  and  of  whom  I  seem  to  recollect 
there  is  some  faint  recall  in  "La  Faustin"  (not, 
by  the  way,  "Le  Faustin,"  as  I  think  the  printer 
has  betrayed  you  into  calling  it  in  your  recent 
Cornhill  paper.)  But  the  golden  blur  swallows 
up  everything,  everything  but  the  slow-crawling, 
the  too  lagging,  loitering  amendment  in  my  tire 
some  condition,  out-distanced  by  the  impatient 
and  attached  spirit  of  yours  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  H.  G.  Wells. 

Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

October  18th,  1912. 
My  dear  Wells, 

I  have  been  sadly  silent  since  having  to 
wire  you  (nearly  three  weeks  ago)  my  poor  plea 
of  inability  to  embrace  your  so  graceful  offer  of 
an  occasion  for  my  at  last  meeting,  in  accordance 
with  my  liveliest  desire,  the  eminent  Arnold  Ben 
nett  ;  sadly  in  fact  is  a  mild  word  for  it,  for  I  have 
cursed  and  raged,  I  have  almost  irrecoverably  suf 
fered — with  all  of  which  the  end  is  not  yet.  I  had 
just  been  taken,  when  I  answered  your  charm 
ing  appeal,  with  a  violent  and  vicious  attack  of 
"Shingles" — under  which  I  have  lain  prostrate  till 
this  hour.  I  don't  shake  it  off — and  perhaps  you 
know  how  fell  a  thing  it  may  be.  I  am  precari 
ously  "up"  and  can  do  a  little  to  beguile  the  black 
inconvenience  of  loss  of  time  at  a  most  awkward 
season  by  dealing  after  this  graceless  fashion  with 
such  arrears  of  smashed  correspondence  as  I  may 
so  presume  to  patch  up ;  but  I  mayn't  yet  plan  for 
the  repair  of  other  losses — I  see  no  hope  of  my 
leaving  home  for  many  days,  and  haven't  yet  been 
further  out  of  this  house  than  to  creep  feebly  about 
my  garden,  where  a  blest  season  has  most  fortu- 


262       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

nately  reigned.  A  couple  of  months  hence  I  go 
up  to  town  to  stay  (I  have  taken  a  lease  of  a  small 
unfurnished  flat  in  Chelsea,  on  the  river;)  and 
there  for  the  ensuing  five  or  six  months  I  shall  aim 
at  inducing  you  to  bring  the  kind  Bennett,  whom 
I  meanwhile  cordially  and  ruefully  greet,  to  par 
take  with  me  of  some  modest  hospitality. 

Meanwhile  if  I've  been  deprived  of  you  on  one 
plane  I've  been  living  with  you  very  hard  on  an 
other  ;  you  may  not  have  forgotten  that  you  kindly 
sent  me  "Marriage"  (as  you  always  so  kindly  ren 
der  me  that  valued  service;)  which  I've  been  able 
to  give  myself  to  at  my  less  afflicted  and  ravaged 
hours.  I  have  read  you,  as  I  always  read  you,  and 
as  I  read  no  one  else,  with  a  complete  abdication  of 
all  those  "principles  of  criticism,"  canons  of  form, 
preconceptions  of  felicity,  references  to  the  idea  of 
method  or  the  sacred  laws  of  composition,  which 
I  roam,  which  I  totter,  through  the  pages  of  others 
attended  in  some  dim  degree  by  the  fond  yet  feeble 
theory  of,  but  which  I  shake  off,  as  I  advance  un 
der  your  spell,  with  the  most  cynical  inconsistency. 
For  under  your  spell  I  do  advance — save  when  I 
pull  myself  up  stock  still  in  order  not  to  break 
it  with  so  much  as  the  breath  of  appreciation;  I 
live  with  you  and  in  you  and  (almost  cannibal-like) 
on  you,  on  you  H.  G.  W.,  to  the  sacrifice  of  your 
Marjories  and  your  Traffords,  and  whoever  may 
be  of  their  company;  not  your  treatment  of  them, 
at  all,  but,  much  more,  their  befooling  of  you 
(pass  me  the  merely  scientific  expression — I  mean 
your  fine  high  action  in  view  of  the  red  herring 
of  lively  interest  they  trail  for  you  at  their  heels) 
becoming  thus  of  the  essence  of  the  spectacle  for 
me,  and  nothing  in  it  all  "happening"  so  much  as 
these  attestations  of  your  character  and  behaviour, 
these  reactions  of  yours  as  you  more  or  less  follow 
them,  affect  me  as  vividly  happening.  I  see  you 
"behave,"  all  along,  much  more  than  I  see  them 


AET.  69  TO  H.  G.  WELLS  263 

even  when  they  behave  (as  I'm  not  sure  they  be 
have  most  in  "Marriage")  with  whatever  charged 
intensity  or  accomplished  effect;  so  that  the  ground 
of  the  drama  is  somehow  most  of  all  the  adventure 
for  you — not  to  say  of  you — the  moral,  tempera 
mental,  personal,  expressional,  of  your  setting  it 
forth ;  an  adventure  in  fine  more  appreciable  to  me 
than  any  of  those  you  are  by  way  of  letting  them 
in  for.  I  don't  say  that  those  you  let  them  in  for 
don't  interest  me  too,  and  don't  "come  off"  and 
people  the  scene  and  lead  on  the  attention,  about 
as  much  as  I  can  do  with;  but  only,  and  always, 
that  you  beat  them  on  their  own  ground  and  that 
your  "story,"  through  the  five  hundred  pages, 
says  more  to  me  than  theirs.  You'll  find  this  per 
haps  a  queer  rigmarole  of  a  statement,  but  I  ask 
you  to  allow  for  it  just  now  as  the  mumble,  at  best, 
of  an  invalid ;  and  wait  a  little  till  I  can  put  more  of 
my  hand  on  my  sense.  Mind  you  that  the  restriction 
I  may  seem  to  you  to  lay  on  my  view  of  your  work 
still  leaves  that  work  more  convulsed  with  life  and 
more  brimming  with  blood  than  any  it  is  given  me 
nowadays  to  meet.  The  point  I  have  wanted  to 
make  is  that  I  find  myself  absolutely  unable,  and 
still  more  unwilling,  to  approach  you,  or  to  take 
leave  of  you,  in  any  projected  light  of  criticism, 
in  any  judging  or  concluding,  any  comparing,  in 
fact  in  any  aesthetic  or  "literary"  relation  at  all; 
and  this  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  light  of  criti 
cism  is  almost  that  in  which  I  most  fondly  bask 
and  that  the  amusement  I  consequently  renounce 
is  one  of  the  dearest  of  all  to  me.  I  simply  decline 
—that's  the  way  the  thing  works — to  pass  you 
again  through  my  cerebral  oven  for  critical  con 
sumption:  I  consume  you  crude  and  whole  and  to 
the  last  morsel,  cannibalistically,  quite,  as  I  say; 
licking  the  platter  clean  of  the  last  possibility  of 
a  savour  and  remaining  thus  yours  abjectly, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


264       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1012 

To  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward. 
Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

October  22nd,  1912. 
Dear  Mary  Ward, 

Having  to  acknowledge  in  this  cold-blooded 
form  so  gracious  a  favour  as  your  kind  letter  just 
received  is  so  sorry  a  business  as  to  tell  at  once  a 
sad  tale  of  the  stricken  state.    I  have  been  laid  up 
these  three  weeks  with  an  atrocious  visitation  of 
"Shingles,"  as  the  odious  ailment  is  so  vulgarly  and 
inadequately   called — the   medical   herpes   zonalis 
meeting  much  better  the  malign  intensity  of  the 
case — and  the  end  is  not  yet.    I  am  still  most  sore 
and  sorry  and  can  but  work  off  in  this  fashion  a 
fraction  of  my  correspondence.     C'est  assez  vous 
dire  that  I  can  make  no  plan  for  any  social  adven 
ture  within  any  computable  time.     Forgive  my 
taking  this  occasion  to  add  further  and  with  that 
final  frankness  that  winds  up  "periods  of  life"  and 
earthly  stages,  as  it  were,  that  I  feel  the  chapter 
of  social  adventure  now  forever  closed,  and  that  I 
must  go  on  for  the  rest  of  my  days,  such  as  that  rest 
may  be,  only  tout  doucement,  as  utterly  doucement 
as  can  possibly  be  managed.     I  am  aged,  infirm, 
hideously  unsociable  and  utterly  detached  from  any 
personal  participation  in  the  political  game,  to 
which  I  am  naturally  and  from  all  circumstances  so 
alien  here,  and  which  forms  the  constant  carnival 
of  all  you  splendid  young  people.    Don't  take  this 
unamiable  statement,  please,  for  a  profession  of 
relaxed  attachment  to  any  bright  individual,  or 
least  of  all  to  any  valued  old  friends;  but  just  par 
don  my  dropping  it,  as  I  pass,  in  the  interest  of 
the  great  pusillanimity  that  I  find  it  important 
positively  to  cultivate — even  at  the  risk  of  affect 
ing  you  as  solemn  and  pompous  and  ridiculous. 


AET.  69    TO  MRS.  HUMPHRY  WARD         265 

I  will  admit  to  you  (should  you  be  so  gently  pa 
tient  as  to  be  moved  in  the  least  to  contend  with 
me)  that  this  prolonged  visitation  of  pain  doesn't 
suggest  to  one  views  of  future  ease  of  any  kind. 
I  have  none  the  less  a  view  of  coming  up  to  town, 
for  the  rest  of  the  winter,  as  soon  as  possible  after 
Christmas;  and  I  reserve  the  social  adventure  of 
tea  in  Grosvenor  Place — effected  with  impunity — 
as  the  highest  crown  of  my  confidence.  I  shall 
trust  you  then  to  observe  how  exactly  those  charm 
ing  conditions  may  seem  suited  to  my  powers. 
I'm  delighted  to  know  meanwhile  that  you  have 
finished  a  gallant  piece  of  work,  which  is  more  than 
I  can  say  of  myself  after  a  whole  summer  of  stiff 
frustration;  for  my  current  complaint  is  but  the 
overflow  of  the  bucket.  Just  see  how  your  great 
goodnature  has  exposed  you  to  that  spatterment! 
But  I  pull  up — this  is  too  lame  a  gait;  and  am 
yours  all  not  less  faithfully  than  feebly, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward. 

Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

October  24th,  1912. 
My  dear  Mary  Ward, 

I  feel  I  must  really  thank  you  afresh,  even 
by  the  freedom  of  this  impersonal  mechanism,  for 
your  renewed  expression  of  kindness — very  sooth 
ing  and  sustaining  to  me  in  my  still  rather  dreary 
case.  I  am  doing  my  utmost  to  get  better,  but  the 
ailment  has  apparently  endless  secrets  of  its  own 
for  preventing  that;  an  infernal  player  with  still 
another  and  another  vicious  card  up  his  sleeve. 
This  is  precisely  why  your  generous  accents  touch 
me — making  me  verily  yearn  as  I  think  of  the 
balm  I  should  indeed  find  in  talking  with  you  of 


266       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

the  latest  products  of  those  producers  (few  though 
they  be)  who  lend  themselves  in  a  degree  to  re 
mark.  I  have  but  within  a  day  or  two  permitted 
myself  a  modicum  of  remark  to  H.  G.  Wells — 
who  had  sent  me  "Marriage";  but  I  should  really 
rather  have  addressed  the  quantity  to  you,  on  whom 
it's  not  so  important  I  should  make  my  impression. 
I  mean  I  should  be  in  your  case  comparatively 
irrelevant — whereas  in  his  I  feel  myself  relevant 
only  to  be  by  the  same  stroke,  as  it  were,  but  vain 
and  ineffectual.  Strange  to  me — in  his  affair — 
the  coexistence  of  so  much  talent  with  so  little  art, 
so  much  life  with  (so  to  speak)  so  little  living! 
But  of  him  there  is  much  to  say,  for  I  really  think 
him  more  interesting  by  his  faults  than  he  will 
probably  ever  manage  to  be  in  any  other  way;  and 
irhe  is  a  most  vivid  and  violent  object-lesson.  But 
it's  as  if  I  were  pretending  to  talk — which,  for  this 
beastly  frustration,  I  am  not.  I  envy  you  the 
quite  ideal  and  transcendent  jollity  (as  if  Marie 
Corelli  had  herself  evoked  the  image  for  us)  of 
having  polished  off  a  brilliant  coup  and  being  on 
your  way  to  celebrate  the  case  in  Paris.  It's  for 
me  to-day  as  if  people  only  did  these  things  in 
Marie — and  in  Mary!  Do  while  you  are  there  re- 
enter,  if  convenient  to  you,  into  relation  with  Mrs. 
Wharton;  if  she  be  back,  that  is,  from  the  last  of 
her  dazzling,  her  incessant,  braveries  of  far  ex- 
cursionism.  You  may  in  that  case  be  able  to  ap 
pease  a  little  my  always  lively  appetite  for  news 
of  her.  Don't,  I  beseech  you,  "acknowledge"  in 
any  manner  this,  with  all  you  have  else  to  do;  not 
even  to  hurl  back  upon  me  (in  refutation,  reproba 
tion  or  whatever)  the  charge  I  still  persist  in  of 
your  liking  "politics"  because  of  your  all  having, 
as  splendid  young  people,  the  perpetual  good  time 
of  being  so  intimately  in  them.  They  never  cease 
to  remind  me  personally,  here  (close  corporation 
or  intimate  social  club  as  they  practically  affect 


AET.  69    TO  MRS.  HUMPHRY  WARD         267 

the  aged  and  infirm,  the  lone  and  detached,  the  ab 
jectly  literary  and  unenrolled  alien  as  being,)  that 
one  must  sacrifice  all  sorts  of  blest  freedoms  and 
immunities,  treasures  of  detachment  and  percep 
tion  that  make  up  for  the  "outsider"  state,  on  any 
occasion  of  practical  approach  to  circling  round 
the  camp;  for  penetration  into  which  I  haven't  a 
single  one  of  your  pass-words — yours,  I  again 
mean,  of  the  splendid  young  lot.  But  don't  pity 
me,  all  the  same,  for  this  picture  of  my  dim  exclu 
sion;  it  is  so  compatible  with  more  other  initiations 
than  I  know,  on  the  whole,  almost  what  to  do  with. 
I  hear  the  pass-words  given — for  it  does  happen 
that  they  sometimes  reach  my  ear ;  and  then,  so  far 
from  representing  for  me  the  "salt  of  life,"  as  you 
handsomely  put  it,  they  seem  to  form  for  me  the 
very  measure  of  intellectual  insipidity.  All  of 
which,  however,  is  so  much  more  than  I  meant  to 
be  led  on  to  growl  back  at  your  perfect  benevo 
lence.  Still,  still,  still — well,  still  I  am  harmoni 
ously  yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 

To  Gaillard  T.  Lapsley. 

Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

October  24th,  1912. 
My  dear  grand  Gaillard, 

I  seem  to  do  nothing  just  now  but  hurl 
back  gruff  refusals  at  gracious  advances — and  all 
in  connection  with  the  noble  shades  and  the  social 
scenes  you  particularly  haunt.  I  wrote  Howard 
S.  last  night  that  I  couldn't,  for  weary  dreary 
reasons,  come  to  meet  you  at  Qu'acre;  and  now  I 
have  just  polished  off  (by  this  mechanical  means, 
to  which,  for  the  time,  I'm  squalidly  restricted)  the 
illustrious  Master  of  Magdalene,  who  artfully  and 
insidiously  backed  by  your  scarce  less  shining  self, 


268       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

has  invited  me  to  exhibit  my  battered  old  person 
and  blighted  old  wit  on  some  luridly  near  day  in 
those  parts.  I  have  had  to  refuse  him,  though 
using  for  the  purpose  the  most  grovelling  lan 
guage  ;  and  I  have  now  to  thank  you,  with  the  same 
morbid  iridescence  of  form  and  the  same  invincible 
piggishness  of  spirit,  for  your  share  in  the  large 
appeal.  Things  are  complicated  with  me  to  the 
last  degree,  please  believe,  at  present;  and  the 
highest  literary  flights  I  am  capable  of  are  these 
vain  gestes  from  the  dizzy  edge  of  the  couch  of 
pain.  I  have  been  this  whole  month  sharply  ill — 
under  an  odious  visitation  of  "Shingles";  and  am 
not  yet  free  or  healed  or  able ;  not  at  all  on  my  feet 
or  at  my  ease.  It  has  been  a  most  dismal  summer 
for  me,  for,  after  a  most  horrid  and  undermined 
July  and  August,  I  had  begun  in  September  to 
face  about  to  work  and  hope,  when  this  new  plague 
of  Egypt  suddenly  broke — to  make  confusion  worse 
confounded.  I  am  up  to  my  neck  in  arrears,  dis 
abilities,  and  I  should  add  despairs — were  my 
resolution  not  to  be  beaten,  however  battered,  not 
so  adequate,  apparently,  to  my  constitutional  pre 
sumption.  Meanwhile,  oh  yes,  I  am  of  course  as 
bruised  and  bored,  as  deprived  and  isolated,  and 
even  as  indignant,  as  you  like.  But  that  I  still  can 
be  indignant  seems  to  kind  of  promise;  perhaps  it's 
a  symptom  of  dawning  salvation.  The  great  thing, 
at  any  rate,  is  for  you  to  understand  that  I  look 
forward  to  being  fit  within  no  calculable  time  either 
to  prance  in  public  or  prattle  in  private,  and  that 
I  grieve  to  have  nothing  better  to  tell  you.  Very 
charming  and  kind  to  me  your  own  news  from 
la-bas.  I  won't  attempt  to  do  justice  now  to  "all 
that  side."  I  sent  Howard  last  night  some  ex 
press  message  to  you — which  kindly  see  that  he 
delivers.  We  shall  manage  something,  all  the 
same,  yet,  and  I  am  all  faithfully  yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


A».  69  TO  JOHN  BAILEY  269 


To  John  Bailey. 

«-^ 

The  following  refers  to  the  offer,  transmitted  by  Mr. 
Bailey,  of  the  chairmanship  of  the  English  Association 

Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
November  llth,  1912. 
My  dear  John, 

Forgive  (and  while  you  are  about  it  please 
commiserate)  my  having  to  take  this  roundabout 
way  of  acknowledging  your  brave  letter.  I  am 
stricken  and  helpless  still — I  can't  sit  up  like  a 
gentleman  and  drive  the  difficult  pen.  I  am  hav 
ing  an  absolutely  horrid  and  endless  visitation — 
being  now  in  the  seventh  week  of  the  ordeal  I  had 
the  other  day  to  mention  to  you.  It's  a  weary, 
dreary  business,  perpetual  atrocious  suffering,  and 
you  must  pardon  my  replying  to  you  as  I  can  and 
not  at  all  as  I  would.  And  I  speak  here,  I  have, 
alas,  to  say,  not  of  my  form  of  utterance  only — for 
my  matter  (given  that  of  your  own  charming  ap 
peal)  would  have  in  whatever  conditions  to  be 
absolutely  the  same.  Let  me,  for  some  poor  com 
fort's  sake,  make  the  immediate  rude  jump  to  the 
one  possible  truth  of  my  case :  it  is  out  of  my  power 
to  meet  your  invitation  with  the  least  decency  or 
grace.  When  one  declines  a  beautiful  honour, 
when  one  simply  sits  impenetrable  to  a  generous 
and  eloquent  appeal,  one  had  best  have  the  horrid 
act  over  as  soon  as  possible  and  not  appear  to  beat 
about  the  bush  and  keep  up  the  fond  suspense. 
For  me,  frankly,  my  dear  John,  there  is  simply  no 
question  of  these  things  :\I  am  a  mere  stony,  ugly 
monster  of  Dissociation  and  Detachment.  I  have 
never  in  all  my  life  gone  in  for  these  other  things, 
but  have  dodged  and  shirked  and  successfully 


270       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

evaded  them — to  the  best  of  my  power  at  least,  and 
so  far  as  they  have  in  fact  assaulted  me :  all  my  in 
stincts  and  the  very  essence  of  any  poor  thing  that 
I  might,  or  even  still  may,  trump  up  for  the  oc 
casion  as  my  "genius"  have  been  against  them,  and 
are  more  against  them  at  this  day  than  ever,  though 
two  or  three  of  them  (meaning  by  "them"  the  col 
lective  and  congregated  bodies,  the  splendid  organi 
sations,  aforesaid)  have  successfully  got  their 
teeth,  in  spite  of  all  I  could  do,  into  my  bewildered 
and  badgered  antiquity.  And  this  last,  you  see, 
is  just  one  of  the  reasons — !  for  my  not  collapsing 
further,  not  exhibiting  the  last  demoralisation,  un 
der  the  elegant  pressure  of  which  your  charming 
plea  is  so  all  but  dazzling  a  specimen.  I  can't  go 
into  it  all  much  in  this  sorry  condition  (a  bad  and 
dismal  one  still,  for  my  ailment  is  not  only,  at  the 
end  of  so  many  weeks,  as  "tedious"  as  you  suppose, 
but  quite  fiendishly  painful  into  the  bargain)  — 
but  the  rough  sense  of  it  is  that  I  believe  only  in 
absolutely  independent,  individual  and  lonely  vir 
tue,  and  in  the  serenely  unsociable  (or  if  need  be 
at  a  pinch  sulky  and  sullen)  practice  of  the  same; 
the  observation  of  a  lifetime  having  convinced  me 
that  no  fruit  ripens  but  under  that  temporarily 
graceless  rigour,  and  that  the  associational  process 
for  bringing  it  on  is  but  a  bright  and  hollow  arti 
fice,  all  vain  and  delusive.  (I  speak  here  of  the 
Arts — or  of  my  own  poor  attempt  at  one  or  two 
of  them;  the  other  matters  must  speak  for  them 
selves.  )j  Let  me  even  while  I  am  about  it  heap  up 
the  measure  of  my  grossness:  the  mere  dim  vision 
of  presiding  or  what  is  called,  I  believe,  taking  the 
chair,  at  a  speechifying  public  dinner,  fills  me,  and 
has  filled  me  all  my  life,  with  such  aversion  and 
horror  that  I  have  in  the  most  odious  manner  con 
sistently  refused  for  years  to  be  present  on  such 
occasions  even  as  a  guest  pre-assured  of  protection 
and  effacement,  and  have  not  departed  from  my 


AET.  69  TO  JOHN  BAILEY 

grim  consistency  even  when  cherished  and  excel 
lent  friends  were  being  "offered"  the  banquet.  I 
have  at  such  times  let  them  know  in  advance  that 
I  was  utterly  not  to  be  counted  on,  and  have  indeed 
quite  gloried  in  my  shame;  sitting  at  home  the 
while  and  gloating  over  the  fact  that  I  wasn't 
present.  In  fine  the  revolution  that  my  pretending 
to  lend  myself  to  your  noble  combination  would 
propose  to  make  in  my  life  is  unthinkable  save  as 
a  convulsion  that  would  simply  end  it.  This  then 
must  serve  as  my  answer  to  your  kindest  of  letters 
—until  at  some  easier  hour  I  am  able  to  make  you 
a  less  brutal  one.  I  know  you  would,  or  even  will 
wrestle  with  me,  or  at  least  feel  as  if  you  would 
like  to;  and  I  won't  deny  that  to  converse  with 
you  on  any  topic  under  the  sun,  and  even  in  a  con 
nection  in  which  I  may  appear  at  my  worst,  can 
never  be  anything  but  a  delight  to  me.  The  idea 
of  such  a  delight  so  solicits  me,  in  fact,  as  I  write, 
that  if  I  were  only  somewhat  less  acutely  laid  up, 
and  free  to  spend  less  of  my  time  in  bed  and  in 
anguish,  I  would  say  at  once:  Do  come  down  to 
lunch  and  dine  and  sleep,  so  that  I  may  have  the 
pleasure  of  you  in  spite  of  my  nasty  attitude.  As 
it  is,  please  let  me  put  it  thus :  that  as  soon  as  I  get 
sufficiently  better  (if  I  ever  do  at  this  rate)  to  rise 
to  the  level  of  even  so  modest  an  hospitality  as  I 
am  at  best  reduced  to,  I  will  appeal  to  you  to  come 
and  partake  of  it,  in  your  magnanimity,  to  that 
extent :  not  to  show  you  that  I  am  not  utterly  ada 
mant,  but  that  for  private  association,  for  the 
banquet  of  two  and  the  fellowship  of  that  fine  scale, 
I  have  the  best  will  in  the  world.  We  shall  talk 
so  much  (and,  I  am  convinced  in  spite  of  every 
thing,  so  happily)  that  I  won't  say  more  now— 
except  that  I  venture  all  the  same  to  commend 
myself  brazenly  to  Mrs.  John,  and  that  I  am 
yours  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


272       LETTERS  OF   HENRY  JAMES      1912 

To  Dr.  J.  William  White. 
Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

November  14th,  1912. 

My  dear  William, 

I  am  reduced  for  the  present  to  this  grace 
less  machinery,  but  I  would  rather  use  it  "on"  you 
than  let  your  vivid  letter  pass,  under  stress  of  my 
state,  and  so  establish  a  sad  precedent:  since  you 
know  I  never  let  your  letters  pass.  I  have  been 
down  these  seven  weeks  with  an  atrocious  and  ap 
parently  absolutely  endless  attack  of  "Shingles" — 
herpes  zonalis,  you  see  I  know ! — of  the  abominable 
nature  of  which,  at  their  worst,  you  will  be  aware 
from  your  professional  experience,  even  if  you  are 
not,  as  I  devoutly  hope,  by  your  personal.  I  have 
been  having  a  simple  hell  (saving  Letitia's  pres 
ence)  of  a  time;  for  at  its  worst  (and  a  mysterious 
providence  has  held  me  worthy  only  of  that)  the 
pain  and  the  perpetual  distress  are  to  the  last  de 
gree  excruciating  and  wearing.  The  end,  more 
over,  is  not  yet:  I  go  on  and  on — and  feel  as  if  I 
might  for  the  rest  of  my  life — or  would  honestly  so 
feel  were  it  not  that  I  have  some  hope  of  light  or 
relief  from  an  eminent  specialist  .  .  .  who  has 
most  kindly  promised  to  come  down  from  London 
and  see  me  three  days  hence.  My  good  "local 
practitioner"  has  quite  thrown  up  the  sponge — he 
can  do  nothing  for  me  further  and  has  welcomed 
a  consultation  with  an  alacrity  that  speaks  volumes 
for  his  now  at  last  quite  voided  state. 

This  is  a  dismal  tale  to  regale  you  with — accus 
tomed  as  even  you  are  to  dismal  tales  from  me; 
but  let  it  stand  for  attenuation  of  my  [failure]  to 
enter,  with  any  lightness  of  step,  upon  the  vast 
avenue  of  complacency  over  which  you  invite  me 
to  advance  to  some  fonder  contemplation  of  Mr. 


AET.  69    TO  DR.  J.  WILLIAM  WHITE         273 

Roosevelt.  I  must  simply  state  to  you,  my  dear 
William,  that  I  can't  so  much  as  think  of  Mr. 
Roosevelt  for  two  consecutive  moments :  he  has  be 
come  to  me,  these  last  months,  the  mere  monstrous 
embodiment  of  unprecedented  resounding  Noise; 
the  steps  he  lately  took  toward  that  effect — of 
presenting  himself  as  the  noisiest  figure,  or  agency 
of  any  kind,  in  the  long,  dire  annals  of  the  human 
race — having  with  me  at  least  so  consummately 
succeeded.  I  can  but  see  him  and  hear  him  and  feel 
him  as  raging  sound  and  fury;  and  if  ever  a  man 
was  in  a  phase  of  his  weary  development,  or  stage 
of  his  persistent  decline  (as  you  will  call  it)  or 
crisis  of  his  afflicted  nerves  (which  you  will  say  I 
deserve),  not  to  wish  to  roar  with  that  Babel,  or  to 
be  roared  at  by  it,  that  worm-like  creature  is  your 
irreconcileable  friend.  Let  me  say  that  I  haven't 
yet  read  your  Eulogy  of  the  monster,  as  enclosed 
by  you  in  the  newspaper  columns  accompanying 
your  letter — this  being  a  bad,  weak,  oppressed  and 
harassed  moment  for  my  doing  so.  You  see  the 
savagery  of  last  summer,  thundering  upon  our 
tympanums  (pardon  me,  tympana)  from  over  the 
sea,  has  left  such  scars,  such  a  jangle  of  the  audi 
tive  nerve  (am  I  technically  right?)  as  to  make 
the  least  menace  of  another  yell  a  thing  of  horror. 
I  don't  mean,  dear  William,  that  I  suppose  you 
yell — my  auditive  nerve  cherishes  in  spite  of  every 
thing  the  memory  of  your  vocal  sweetness;  but 
your  bristling  protege  has  but  to  peep  at  me  from 
over  your  shoulder  to  make  me  clap  my  hands  to 
my  ears  and  bury  my  head  in  the  deepest  hollow 
of  that  pile  of  pillows  amid  which  I  am  now  pass 
ing  so  much  of  my  life.  However,  I  must  now 
fall  back  upon  them — and  I  rejoice  meanwhile  in 
those  lines  of  your  good  letter  in  which  you  give- 
so  handsome  an  account  of  your  own  soundness 
and  (physical)  saneness.  I  take  this,  fondly,  too, 
for  the  picture  of  Letitia's  "form" — knowing  as 


274       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1012 

I  do  with  what  inveterate  devotion  she  ever  forms 
herself  upon  you.  I  embrace  you  both,  my  dear 
William — so  far  as  you  consent  to  my  abasing  you 
(and  abasing  Letitia,  which  is  graver)  to  the  pil 
lows  aforesaid,  and  am  ever  affectionately  yours 
and  hers, 

HENKY  JAMES. 


To  Edmund  Gosse. 

Mr.   Gosse's  volume  was  his  Portraits  and  Sketches, 
just  published. 

Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
November  19th,  1912. 
My  dear  Gosse, 

I  received  longer  ago  than  I  quite  like  to 
give  you  chapter  and  verse  for  your  so-vividly 
interesting  volume  of  literary  Portraits;  but  you 
will  have  (or  at  least  I  earnestly  beg  you  to  have) 
no  reproach  for  my  long  failure  of  acknowledg 
ment  when  I  tell  you  that  my  sorry  state,  under  this 
dire  physical  visitation,  has  unintermittently  con 
tinued,  and  that  the  end,  or  any  kind  of  real  break 
in  a  continuity  of  quite  damnable  pain,  has  still 
to  be  taken  very  much  on  trust.  I  am  now  in  my 
8th  week  of  the  horrible  experience,  which  I  have 
had  to  endure  with  remarkably  little  medical 
mitigation — really  with  none  worth  speaking  of. 
Stricken  and  helpless,  therefore,  I  can  do  but  lit 
tle,  to  this  communicative  tune,  on  any  one  day; 
which  has  been  also  the  more  the  case  as  my  ad 
mirable  Secretary  was  lately  forced  to  be  a  whole 
fortnight  absent — when  I  remained  indeed  with 
out  resource.  I  avail  myself  for  this  snatch  of 
one  of  the  first  possible  days,  or  rather  hours,  since 
her  return.  But  I  read  your  book,  with  lively  "re 
actions,"  within  the  first  week  of  its  arrival,  and  if 


AET.  69  TO  EDMUND  GOSSE  275 

I  had  then  only  had  you  more  within  range  should 
have  given  you  abundantly  the  benefit  of  my  im 
pressions,  making  you  more  genial  observations 
than  I  shall  perhaps  now  be  able  wholly  to  recover. 
I  recover  perfectly  the  great  one  at  any  rate — it 
is  that  each  of  the  studies  has  extraordinary  indi 
vidual  life,  and  that  of  Swinburne  in  particular, 
of  course,  more  than  any  image  that  will  ever  be 
projected  of  him.  This  is  a  most  interesting  and 
charming  paper,  with  never  a  drop  or  a  slackness 
from  beginning  to  end.  I  can't  help  wishing  you 
had  proceeded  a  little  further  critically — that  is, 
I  mean,  in  the  matter  of  appreciation  of  his  essen 
tial  stuff  and  substance,  the  proportions  of  his 
mixture,  etc.;  as  I  should  have  been  tempted  to 
say  to  you,  for  instance,  "Go  into  that  a  bit  nowl" 
when  you  speak  of  the  early  setting-in  of  his  arrest 
of  development  etc.  But  this  may  very  well  have 
been  out  of  your  frame — it  might  indeed  have 
taken  you  far;  and  the  space  remains  wonderfully 
filled-in,  the  figure  all-convincing.  Beautiful  too 
the  Bailey,  the  Home  and  the  Creighton — this  last 
very  rich  and  fine  and  touching.  I  envy  you  your 
having  known  so  well  so  genial  a  creature  as 
Creighton,  with  such  largeness  of  endowment. 
You  have  done  him  very  handsomely  and  tenderly ; 
and  poor  little  Shorthouse  not  to  the  last  point  of 
tenderness  perhaps,  but  no  doubt  as  handsomely, 
none  the  less,  as  was  conceivably  possible.  I  won't 
deny  to  you  that  it  was  to  your  Andrew  Lang  I 
turned  most  immediately  and  with  most  suspense 
— and  with  most  of  an  effect  of  drawing  a  long 
breath  when  it  was  over.  It  is  very  prettily  and 
artfully  brought  off — but  you  would  of  course 
have  invited  me  to  feel  with  you  how  little  you  felt 
you  were  doing  it  as  we  should,  so  to  speak,  have 
"really  liked."  Of  course  there  were  the  difficulties, 
and  of  course  you  had  to  defer  in  a  manner  to 
some  of  them;  but  your  paper  is  of  value  just  in 


276      LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1012 

proportion  as  you  more  or  less  overrode  them.  His 
recent  extinction,  the  facts  of  long  acquaintance 
and  camaraderie,  let  alone  the  wonder  of  several 
of  his  gifts  and  the  mass  of  his  achievement, 
couldn't,  and  still  can't,  in  his  case,  not  be  compli 
cating,  clogging  and  qualifying  circumstances;  but 
what  a  pity,  with  them  all,  that  a  figure  so  lending 
itself  to  a  certain  amount  of  interesting  real  truth- 
telling,  should,  honestly  speaking,  enjoy  such  im 
punity,  as  regards  some  of  its  idiosyncrasies,  should 
get  off  so  scot-free  ("Scot"-free  is  exactly  the 
word!)  on  all  the  ground  of  its  greatest  hollow- 
ness,  so  much  of  its  most  "successful"  puerility  and 
perversity.  Where  I  can't  but  feel  that  he  should 
be  brought  to  justice  is  in  the  matter  of  his  whole 
"give-away"  of  the  value  of  the  wonderful  chances 
he  so  continually  enjoyed  (enjoyed  thanks  to  cer 
tain  of  his  very  gifts,  I  admit!) — give-away,  I 
mean,  by  his  cultivation,  absolutely,  of  the  puerile 
imagination  and  the  fourth-rate  opinion,  the  com 
ing  round  to  that  of  the  old  apple-woman  at  the 
corner  as  after  all  the  good  and  the  right  as  to  any 
of  the  mysteries  of  mind  or  of  art.  His  mixture 
of  endowments  and  vacant  holes,  and  "the  making 
of  the  part"  of  each,  would  by  themselves  be  matter 
for  a  really  edifying  critical  study — for  which, 
however,  I  quite  recognise  that  the  day  and  the 
occasion  have  already  hurried  heedlessly  away. 
And  I  perhaps  throw  a  disproportionate  weight 
on  the  whole  question — merely  by  reason  of  a  late 
accident  or  two;  such  as  my  having  recently  read 
his  (in  two  or  three  respects  so  able)  Joan  of  Arc, 
or  Maid  of  France,  and  turned  over  his  just- 
published  (I  think  posthumous)  compendium  of 
"English  Literature,"  which  lies  on  my  table  down 
stairs.  The  extraordinary  inexpensiveness  and 
childishness  and  impertinence  of  this  latter  gave 
to  my  sense  the  measure  of  a  whole  side  of  Lang, 
and  yet  which  was  one  of  the  sides  of  his  greatest 


AET.  69  TO  EDMUND  GOSSE  277 

flourishing.  His  extraordinary  voulu  Scotch  pro 
vincialism  crowns  it  and  rounds  it  off  really  making 
one  at  moments  ask  with  what  kind  of  an  inner 
most  intelligence  such  inanities  and  follies  were 
compatible.  The  Joan  of  Arc  is  another  matter, 
of  course;  but  even  there,  with  all  the  accomplish 
ment,  all  the  possession  of  detail,  the  sense  of 
reality,  the  vision  of  the  truths  and  processes  of 
life,  the  light  of  experience  and  the  finer  sense 
of  history,  seem  to  me  so  wanting,  that  in  spite  of 
the  thing's  being  written  so  intensely  at  Anatole 
France,  and  in  spite  of  some  of  A.  F.'s  own  (and 
so  different!)  perversities,  one  "kind  of"  feels  and 
believes  Andrew  again  and  again  bristlingly  yet 
betement  wrong,  and  Anatole  sinuously,  yet  oh 
so  wisely,  right! 

However,  all  this  has  taken  me  absurdly  far,  and 
you'll  wonder  why  I  should  have  broken  away  at 
such  a  tangent.  You  had  given  me  the  oppor 
tunity,  but  it's  over  and  I  shall  never  speak  again! 
I  wish  you  would,  all  the  same — since  it  may  still 
somehow  come  your  way.  Your  paper  as  it  stands 
is  a  gage  of  possibilities.  But  good-bye — I  can't 
in  this  condition  keep  anything  up;  scarce  even 
my  confidence  that  Time,  to  which  I  have  been 
clinging,  is  going,  after  all  to  help.  I  had  from 
Saturday  to  Sunday  afternoon  last,  it  is  true,  the 
admirably  kind  and  beneficent  visit  of  a  London 
friend  who  happens  to  be  at  the  same  time  the 
great  and  all-knowing  authority  and  expert  on 
Herpes;  he  was  so  angelic  as  to  come  down  and 
see  me,  for  24  hours,  thoroughly  overhaul  me  and 
leave  me  with  the  best  assurance  and  with,  what  is 
more  to  the  point,  a  remedy  very  probably  more 
effective  than  any  yet  vouchsafed  to  me.  .  .  . 
When  I  do  at  last  emerge  I  shall  escape  from  these 
confines  and  come  up  to  town  for  the  rest  of  the 
winter.  But  I  shall  have  to  feel  differently  first, 
and  it  may  not  be  for  some  time  yet.  It  in 


278       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

fact  can't  possibly  be  soon.    You  shall  have  then, 
at  any  rate,  more  news — "which,"  a  la  Mrs.  Gamp, 
I  hope  your  own  has  a  better  show  to  make. 
Yours  all,  and  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 

P.S.  I  hope  my  last  report  on  the  little  Etretat 
legend — it  seems  (not  the  legend  but  the  report) 
of  so  long  ago! — gave  you  something  of  the  light 
you  desired.  And  how  I  should  have  liked  to  hear 
about  the  Colvin  dinner  and  its  rich  chiaroscuro. 
He  has  sent  me  his  printed — charming,  I  think — 
speech:  "the  best  thing  he  has  done." 


To  Mrs.  Bigelow. 
Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
November  21st,  1912. 

My  dear  Edith, 

It  is  interesting  to  hear  from  you  on  any 
ground — even  when  I  am  in  the  stricken  state  that 
this  form  of  reply  will  suggest  to  you.  .  .  .  For 
a  couple  of  hours  in  the  morning  I  can  work  off 
letters  in  this  way — this  way  only;  but  let  the  rest 
be  silence,  till  I  scramble  somehow  or  other,  if  I 
ever  do,  out  of  my  hole.  Pray  for  me  hard  mean 
while — you  and  Baby,  and  even  the  ingenuous 
Young  Man;  pray  for  me  with  every  form  and 
rite  of  sacrifice  and  burnt-offering. 

As  for  the  matter  of  your  little  request,  it  is 
of  course  easy,  too  easy,  to  comply  with:  why 
shouldn't  you,  for  instance,  just  nip  off  my  simple 
signature  at  the  end  of  this  and  hand  it  to  the  art 
less  suppliant?  I  call  him  by  these  bad  names  in 
spite  of  your  gentle  picture  of  him,  for  the  simple 
reason  that  the  time  long  ago,  half  a  century  ago, 
passed  away  when  a  request  for  one's  autograph 


AET.  69  TO  MRS.  BIGELOW  279 

could  affect  one  as  anything  but  the  cheapest  and 
vaguest  and  emptiest  "tribute"  the  futility  of  our 
common  nature  is  capable  of.  I  should  like  your 
young  friend  so  much  better,  and  believe  so  much 
more  in  his  sentiments,  if  it  exactly  hadn't  occurred 
to  him  to  put  forth  the  banal  claim.  My  heart  has 
been  from  far  back,  as  I  say,  absolutely  hard 
against  it;  and  the  rate  at  which  it  is  (saving  your 
presence)  postally  vomited  forth  is  one  of  the 
least  graceful  features,  one  of  the  vulgarest  and 
dustiest  and  poorest,  of  the  great  and  glorious 
country  beyond  the  sea.  These  ruthless  words  of 
mine  will  sufficiently  explain  to  you  why  I  indulge 
in  no  further  flourish  for  our  common  admirer  ( for 
I'm  sure  you  share  him  with  me!)  than  my  few 
and  bare  terminal  penstrokes  here  shall  represent! 
Put  him  off  with  them — and  even,  if  you  like,  read 
him  my  relentless  words.  Then  if  he  winces,  or 
weeps,  or  does  anything  nice  and  penitent  and, 
above  all,  intelligent,  press  him  to  your  bosom,  pat 
him  on  the  back  (which  you  would  so  be  in  a  posi 
tion  to  do)  and  tell  him  to  sin  no  more. 

What  is  much  more  interesting  are  your  vivid 
little  words  about  yourself  and  the  child.  I  shall 
put  them  by,  with  your  address  upon  them,  till, 
emerging  from  my  long  tunnel,  as  God  grant  I 
may,  I  come  up  to  town  to  put  in  the  rest  of  the 
winter.  I  have  taken  the  lease,  a  longish  one,  of 
a  little  flat  in  Chelsea,  Cheyne  Walk,  which  must 
now  give  me  again  a  better  place  of  London  hiber 
nation  than  I  have  for  a  long  time  had.  It  had 
become  necessary,  for  life-saving;  and  as  soon  as 
I  shall  have  turned  round  in  it  you  must  come  and 
have  tea  with  me  and  bring  Baby  and  even  the  In 
genuous  One,  if  my  wild  words  haven't  or  don't 
turn  his  tender  passion  to  loathing.  I  shall  really 
like  much  to  see  him — and  even  send  him  my  love 
and  blessing.  Even  if  I  have  produced  in  him  a 
vindictive  reaction  I  will  engage  to  take  him  in 


280       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

hand  and  so  gently  argue  with  him  (on  the  horrid 
autograph  habit)  that  he  will  perhaps  renew  his 
generous  vows !  I  shall  have  nothing  to  show  you, 
later  on,  so  charming  as  the  rhythmic  Butcher's  or 
the  musical  Pub;  only  a  dull  inhuman  view  of  the 
River — which,  however,  adds  almost  as  much  to 
my  rent  as  I  gather  that  your  advantages  add  to 
yours!  Yours  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 

P.S.  I  see  the  infatuated  Youth  is  (on  reading 
your  note  fondly  over)  not  at  your  side  (but  "on 
the  other  side")  and  therefore  not  amenable  to 
your  Bosom  (worse  luck  for  him) — so  I  scrawl  him 
my  sign  independently  of  this.  But  the  moral 
holds! 


To  Robert  C.  Witt. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  the  story  of  The  Outcry 
turns  on  the  fortunes  of  a  picture  attributed  to  "II 
Mantovano." 

Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

November  27th,  1912. 
Dear  Sir, 

I  am  almost  shocked  to  learn,  through  your 
appreciative  note,  that  in  imaginatively  project 
ing,  for  use  in  "The  Outcry,"  such  a  painter  as  the 
Mantovano,  I  unhappily  coincided  with  an  exist 
ing  name,  an  artistic  identity,  a  real  one,  with 
visible  examples,  in  the  annals  of  the  art.  I  had 
never  heard  (in  I  am  afraid  my  disgraceful  ignor 
ance)  of  the  painter  the  two  specimens  of  whom 
in  the  National  Gallery  you  cite;  and  fondly  flat 
tered  myself  that  I  had  simply  excogitated,  for  its 
part  in  my  drama,  a  name  at  once  plausible,  that 
is  of  good  Italian  type,  and  effective,  as  it  were3 


AET.  69          TO  ROBERT  C.  WITT  281 

for  dramatic  bandying-about.  It  was  important, 
you  see,  that  with  the  great  claim  that  the  story 
makes  for  my  artist  I  should  have  a  strictly  sup 
posititious  one — with  no  awkward  existing  data  to 
cast  a  possibly  invidious  or  measurable  light.  So 
my  Mantovano  was  a  creature  of  mere  (convinc 
ing)  fancy — and  this  revelation  of  my  not  having 
been  as  inventive  as  I  supposed  rather  puts  me 
out!  But  I  owe  it  to  you  none  the  less  that  I  shall 
be  able — after  I  have  recovered  from  this  humilia 
tion — to  go  and  have  a  look  at  our  N.G.  inter 
loper.  I  thank  you  for  this  and  am  faithfully 
yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

Mrs.    Wharton   had   sent   him   her   recently   published 
novel,  The  Reef. 

Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

December  4th,  1912. 
My  dear  E.  W. 

Your  beautiful  book  has  been  my  portion 
these  several  days,  but  as  other  matters,  of  a  less 
ingratiating  sort,  have  shared  the  fair  harbourage, 
I  fear  I  have  left  it  a  trifle  bumped  and  bouscule 
in  that  at  the  best  somewhat  agitated  basin.  There 
it  will  gracefully  ride  the  waves,  however,  long 
after  every  other  temporarily  floating  object  shall 
have  sunk,  as  so  much  comparative  "rot,"  beneath 
them.  This  is  a  rude  figure  for  my  sense  of  the 
entire  interest  and  charm,  the  supreme  validity  and 
distinction,  of  The  Reef.  I  am  even  yet,  alas,  in 
anything  but  a  good  way — so  abominably  does  my 
ailment  drag  itself  out;  but  it  has  been  a  real 
lift  to  read  you  and  taste  and  ponder  you;  the 
experience  has  literally  worked,  at  its  hours,  in  a 


282       LETTERS   OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

medicating  sense  that  neither  my  local  nor  my  Lon 
don  Doctor  (present  here  in  his  greatness  for  a 
night  and  a  day)  shall  have  come  within  miles  and 
miles  of.  Let  me  mention  at  once,  and  have  done 
with  it,  that  the  advent  and  the  effect  of  the  intenser 
London  light  can  only  be  described  as  an  anticli 
max,  in  fact  as  a  tragic  farce,  of  the  first  water ;  in 
short  one  of  those  mauvais  tours,  as  far  as  results 
are  concerned,  that  make  one  wonder  how  a  Patient 
ever  survives  any  relation  with  a  Doctor.  My 
Visitor  was  charming,  intelligent,  kind,  all  visibly 
a  great  master  of  the  question;  but  he  prescribed 
me  a  remedy,  to  begin  its  action  directly  he  had 
left,  that  simply  and  at  a  short  notice  sent  me  down 
into  hell,  where  I  lay  sizzling  (never  such  a  sizzle 
before)  for  three  days,  and  has  since  followed  it 
up  with  another  under  the  dire  effect  of  which  I 
languish  even  as  I  now  write.  ...  So  much  to 
express  both  what  I  owe  you  or  have  owed  you  at 
moments  that  at  all  lent  themselves — in  the  way 
of  pervading  balm,  and  to  explain  at  the  same  time 
how  scantly  I  am  able  for  the  hour  to  make  my 
right  acknowledgment. 

There  are  fifty  things  I  should  like  to  say  to 
you  about  the  Book,  and  I  shall  have  said  most 
of  them  in  the  long  run;  but  there  are  some  that 
eagerly  rise  to  my  lips  even  now  and  for  which  I 
want  the  benefit  of  my  "first  flush"  of  apprecia 
tion.  The  whole  of  the  finest  part  is,  I  think, 
quite  the  finest  thing  you  have  done;  both  more 
done  than  even  the  best  of  your  other  doing,  and 
more  worth  it  through  intrinsic  value,  interest  and 
beauty. 

December  9th.  I  had  to  break  off  the  other  day, 
my  dear  Edith,  through  simple  extremity  of  woe; 
and  the  woe  has  continued  unbroken  ever  since — 
I  have  been  in  bed  and  in  too  great  suffering,  too 
unrelieved  and  too  continual,  for  me  to  attempt  any 
decent  form  of  expression.  I  have  just  got  up, 


AET.  69  TO  MRS.  WIIARTON  283 

for  one  of  the  first  times,  even  now,  and  I  sit  in 
command  of  this  poor  little  situation,  ostensibly, 
instead  of  simply  being  bossed  by  it,  though  I  don't 
at  all  know  what  it  will  bring.  To  attempt  in  this 
state  to  rise  to  any  worthy  reference  to  The  Reef 
seems  to  me  a  vain  thing;  yet  there  remains  with 
me  so  strongly  the  impression  of  its  quality  and  of 
the  unspeakably  fouillee  nature  of  the  situation 
between  the  two  principals  (more  gone  into  and 
with  more  undeviating  truth  than  anything  you 
have  done)  that  I  can't  but  babble  of  it  a  little  to 
you  even  with  these  weak  lips.  It  all  shows,  partly, 
what  strength  of  subject  is,  and  how  it  carries  and 
inspires,  inasmuch  as  I  think  your  subject  in  its 
essence  [is]  very  fine  and  takes  in  no  end  of  beau 
tiful  things  to  do.  Each  of  these  two  figures  is 
admirable  for  truth  and  justcsse;  the  woman  an 
exquisite  thing,  and  with  her  characteristic  finest, 
scarce  differentiated  notes  (that  is  some  of  them) 
sounded  with  a  wonder  of  delicacy.  I'm  not  sure 
her  oscillations  are  not  beyond  our  notation;  yet 
they  are  so  held  in  your  hand,  so  felt  and  known 
and  shown,  and  everything  seems  so  to  come  of 
itself.  I  suffer  or  worry  a  little  from  the  fact  that 
in  the  Prologue,  as  it  were,  we  are  admitted  so 
much  into  the  consciousness  of  the  man,  and  that 
after  the  introduction  of  Anna  (Anna  so  perfectly 
named)  we  see  him  almost  only  as  she  sees  him— 
which  gives  our  attention  a  different  sort  of  work 
to  do;  yet  this  is  really,  I  think,  but  a  triumph  of 
your  method,  for  he  remains  of  an  absolute  con 
sistent  verity,  showing  himself  in  that  way  better 
perhaps  than  in  any  other,  and  without  a  false 
note  imputable,  not  a  shadow  of  one,  to  his  manner 
of  so  projecting  himself.  The  beauty  of  it  is  that 
it  is,  for  all  it  is  worth,  a  Drama,  and  almost,  as 
it  seems  to  me,  of  the  psychologic  Racinian  unity, 
intensity  and  gracility.  Anna  is  really  of  Racine 
and  one  presently  begins  to  feel  her  throughout  as 


284       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

an  Eriphyle  or  a  Berenice :  which,  by  the  way,  helps 
to  account  a  little  for  something  qui  me  chiffonne 
throughout:  which  is  why  the  whole  thing,  un 
related  and  unreferred  save  in  the  most  superficial 
way  to  its  milieu  and  background,  and  to  any  de 
termining  or  qualifying  entourage^  takes  place 
comme  cela,  and  in  a  specified,  localised  way,  in 
France — these  non-French  people  "electing,"  as 
it  were,  to  have  their  story  out  there.  This  particu 
larly  makes  all  sorts  of  unanswered  questions  come 
up  about  Owen;  and  the  notorious  wickedness  of 
Paris  isn't  at  all  required  to  bring  about  the  con 
ditions  of  the  Prologue.  Oh,  if  you  knew  how 
plentifully  we  could  supply  them  in  London  and, 
I  should  suppose,  in  New  York  or  in  Boston.  But 
the  point  was,  as  I  see  it,  that  you  couldn't  really 
give  us  the  sense  of  a  Boston  Eriphyle  or  Boston 
Givre,  and  that  an  exquisite  instinct,  "back  of" 
your  Racinian  inspiration  and  settling  the  whole 
thing  for  you,  whether  consciously  or  not,  abso 
lutely  prescribed  a  vague  and  elegant  French 
colonnade  or  gallery,  with  a  French  river  dimly 
gleaming  through,  as  the  harmonious  fond  you 
required.  In  the  key  of  this,  with  all  your  reality, 
you  have  yet  kept  the  whole  thing:  and,  to 
deepen  the  harmony  and  accentuate  the  literary 
pitch,  have  never  surpassed  yourself  for  certain 
exquisite  moments,  certain  images,  analogies,  meta 
phors,  certain  silver  correspondences  in  your  fapon 
de  dire;  examples  of  which  I  could  pluck  out  and 
numerically  almost  confound  you  with,  were  I  not 
stammering  this  in  so  handicapped  a  way.  There 
used  to  be  little  notes  in  you  that  were  like  fine 
benevolent  finger-marks  of  the  good  George  Eliot 
— the  echo  of  much  reading  of  that  excellent 
woman,  here  and  there,  that  is,  sounding  through. 
But  now  you  are  like  a  lost  and  recovered  "ancient" 
whom  she  might  have  got  a  reading  of  (especially 
were  he  a  Greek)  and  of  whom  in  her  texture  some 


AET.  69  TO  MRS.  WHARTON  285 

weaker  reflection  were  to  show.  For,  dearest 
Edith,  you  are  stronger  and  firmer  and  finer  than 
all  of  them  put  together;  you  go  further  and  you 
say  mieuoc,  and  your  only  drawback  is  not  having 
the  homeliness  and  the  inevitability  and  the  hap 
py  limitation  and  the  affluent  poverty,  of  a  Coun 
try  of  your  Own  (comme  moi,  par  exemple!)  It 
makes  you,  this  does,  as  you  exquisitely  say  of 
somebody  or  something  at  some  moment,  elegiac 
(what  penetration,  what  delicacy  in  your  use  there 
of  the  term!) — makes  you  so,  that  is,  for  the  Ra- 
cinian-serieux — but  leaves  you  more  in  the  desert 
(for  everything  else)  that  surrounds  Apex  City. 
But  you  will  say  that  you're  content  with  your  lot ; 
that  the  desert  surrounding  Apex  City  is  quite 
enough  of  a  dense  crush  for  you,  and  that  with  the 
colonnade  and  the  gallery  and  the  dim  river  you 
will  always  otherwise  pull  through.  To  which  I 
can  only  assent — after  such  an  example  of  pulling 
through  as  The  Reef.  Clearly  you  have  only  to 
pull,  and  everything  will  come. 

These  are  tepid  and  vain  remarks,  for  truly  I 
am  helpless.  I  have  had  all  these  last  days  a  per 
fect  hell  of  an  exasperation  of  my  dire  complaint, 
the  llth  week  of  which  begins  to-day,  and  have 
arrived  at  the  point  really — the  weariness  of  pain 
so  great — of  not  knowing  a  quel  saint  me  vouer. 
In  this  despair,  and  because  "change"  at  any 
hazard  and  any  cost  is  strongly  urged  upon  me  by 
both  my  Doctors,  and  is  a  part  of  the  regular 
process  of  denouement  of  my  accursed  ill,  I  am 
in  all  probability  trying  to  scramble  up  to  Lon 
don  by  the  end  of  this  week,  even  if  I  have  to 
tumble,  howling,  out  of  bed  and  go  forth  in  my 
bedclothes.  I  shall  go  in  this  case  to  Garlant's 
Hotel,  Suffolk  Street,  where  you  have  already 
seen  me,  and  not  to  my  Club,  which  is  impossible 
in  illness,  nor  to  my  little  flat  (21  Carlyle  Man 
sions,  Cheyne  Walk,  Chelsea,  S.W.)  which  will 


286       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

not  yet,  or  for  another  three  or  four  weeks,  be 
ready  for  me.  The  change  to  London  may  pos 
sibly  do  something  toward  breaking  the  spell: 
please  pray  hard  that  it  shall.  Forgive  too  my 
muddled  accents  and  believe  me,  through  the  whole 
bad  business,  not  the  less  faithfully  yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  A.  F.  de  Navarro. 
Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

December  12th,  1912. 

My  dear  delightful  Tony, 

Your  missive,  so  vivid  and  genial,  reaches 
me,  alas,  at  a  time  of  long  eclipse  and  depression, 
during  which  my  faculties  have  been  blighted,  my 
body  tortured,  and  my  resources  generally  ex 
hausted.  ...  I  tell  you  these  dismal  things  to 
explain  in  the  first  place  why  I  am  reduced  to 
addressing  you  by  this  graceless  machinery  (I 
haven't  written  a  letter  with  my  own  poor  hand  for 
long  and  helpless  weeks;)  and  in  the  second  place 
why  I  bring  to  bear  on  your  gentle  composition 
an  intelligence  still  clouded  and  weakened.  But 
I  have  read  it  with  sympathy,  and  I  think  I  may 
say,  most  of  all  with  envy ;  so  haunted  with  pangs, 
while  one  tosses  on  the  couch  of  pain — and  mine 
has  been,  from  the  nature  of  my  situation,  a  poor 
lone  and  unsurrounded  pallet — all  one's  visionary 
and  imaginative  life;  which  one  imputes,  day  by 
day,  to  happy  people  who  frisk  among  fine  old 
gardens  and  oscillate  between  Clubs  of  the  Arts 
and  Monuments  of  the  Past.  I  am  delighted  that 
the  Country  Life  people  asked  you  for  your  paper, 
which  I  find  ever  so  lightly  and  brightly  done, 
with  a  touch  as  easy  and  practised  as  if  you  were 
the  Darling  of  the  Staff.  That  is  in  fact  exactly 


AET.  69        TO  A.  F.  DE  NAVARRO  287 

what  I  hope  your  paper  may  make  you — clearly 
you  have  the  right  sympathetic  turn  for  those  evo 
cations,  and  I  shall  be  glad  to  think  of  you  as 
evoking  again  and  again.  I  only  wish  you  hadn't 
to  deal  this  time  with  a  house  so  amply  modernised, 
in  fact  so  renewed  altogether,  save  for  a  false  front 
or  two  (or  rather  for  a  true  one  with  false  sides 
and  backs),  as  I  gather  Abbotswood  to  be.  The 
irrepressible  Lutyens  rages  about  us  here,  known 
at  a  glance  by  that  modern  note  of  the  archaic 
which  has  become  the  most  banal  form  of  our 
cleverness.  There  is  nothing  left  for  me  personally 
to  like  but  the  little  mouldy  nooks  that  Country 
Life  is  too  proud  to  notice  and  everyone  else  (in 
cluding  the  photographers)  too  rich  to  touch  with 
their  fingers  of  gold.  I  have  too  the  inimitable 
old  garden  on  my  nerves;  living  here  in  a  great 
garden  county  I  have  positively  almost  grown  to 
hate  flowers — so  that  only  just  now  my  poor  con 
taminated  little  gardener  is  turning  the  biggest 
border  I  have  (scarce  bigger  it  is  true  than  my 
large  unshaven  cheek)  into  a  question,  a  begged 
question,  of  turf,  so  that  we  shall  presently  have 
"chucked"  Flora  altogether.  Forgive,  however, 
these  morbid,  maussade  remarks ;  the  blue  devils  of 
a  long  illness  still  interposing,  in  their  insistent 
attitude,  between  my  vision  and  your  beauty — in 
which  I  include  Mary's,  largely,  and  that  of  all 
the  fine  complexion  of  Broadway.  I  return  your 
lucid  sheets  with  this,  but  make  out  that,  as  you 
are  to  be  in  town  only  till  Thursday  p.m.  (unless 
I  am  mistaken),  they  will  reach  you  the  sooner  by 
my  sending  them  straight  home.  My  wish  for  their 
best  luck  go  with  them!  I  ought  to  mention  that 
under  extreme  push  of  my  Doctors  (for  I  luxuri 
ate  in  Two)  I  am  seeking  that  final  desperate 
remedy  of  a  "change"  which  imposes  itself  at  last 
in  a  long  illness,  to  break  into  the  vicious  circle  and 
dissipate  the  blight,  by  going  up  to  town — almost 


288       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1912 

straight  out  of  bed  and  dangling  my  bedclothes 
about  me.  This  will,  I  trust,  smash  the  black  spell. 
I  have  taken  a  small  flat  there  ...  on  what  ap 
pears  to  be  a  lease  that  will  long  survive  me,  and 
there  I  earnestly  beg  you  to  seek  me  as  soon  as 
may  be  after  the  new  year.  I  am  having  first  to 
crouch  at  an  obscure  hotel.  I  embrace  you  Both 
and  am  in  much  dilapidation  but  all  fidelity  yours 
always, 

HENKY  JAMES. 


To  Henry  James,  junior. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

January  19th,  1913. 
Dearest  Harry, 

I  wrote,  very  copiously,  and  I  hope  not 
worryingly  at  all  (for  I  only  meant  to  be  reassur 
ing)  to  your  Mother  yesterday,  from  whom  I  had 
had  two  beautiful  unacknowledged  letters  within 
the  last  days  or  so:  unacknowledged  save  for  a 
cable,  of  a  cheerful  stamp,  which  I  sent  off  to 
Irving  Street  about  a  week  ago,  and  which  will 
have  been  sent  on  to  you.  But  all  the  while  your 
most  blest  letter,  written  during  your  Christmas 
moment  at  Cambridge,  has  been  for  me  a  thing 
to  be  so  grateful  for  that  I  must  express  to  you 
something  of  it  to-day — even  at  the  risk  of  a  glut 
of  information.  My  long  silence — since  I  came 
up  to  town,  including,  I  mean,  my  pretty  dismal 
weeks  at  that  "Garlant's"  of  ill  association — has 
had  a  great  inevitability,  from  several  causes;  but 
into  these  I  shall  have  gone  to  your  Mother,  whom 
I  think  I  explicitly  asked  to  send  you  on  my  let 
ter,  and  I  don't  want  to  waste  force  in  repetitions. 
It  won't  be  repeating  too  much  to  say  again  what 
I  said  to  her,  even  with  extreme  emphasis,  that  I 


AET.  69     TO  HENRY  JAMES,  JUNIOR        289 

feel  singularly  justified  of  this  basis  for  my  win 
ter  times  in  London;  so  much  does  it  appear,  now 
that  the  preliminary  and  just  postliminary  strain 
of  it  is  over,  the  very  best  thing  I  could  have  done 
for  myself.  My  southward  position  (as  to  the 
rooms  I  most  use)  immediately  over  the  River  is 
verily  an  "asset,"  and  not  even  in  the  garden-room 
at  L.H.,  of  summer  mornings,  have  I  been  better 
placed  for  work.  With  which,  all  the  detail  here 
is  right  and  pleasant  and  workable;  my  servants 
extremely  rejoice  in  it — but  I  am  too  much  repeat 
ing!  .  .  .  Above  all,  my  forenoons  being  by  the 
mercy  of  the  Powers,  whoever  or  whatever  they 
are,  my  best  time,  I  have  got  back  to  work,  and, 
with  my  uncanny  interest  in  it  and  zeal  for  it  still 
unimpaired,  feel  that  it  must  "mean  something" 
that  I  am  thus  reserved,  after  many  troubles,  for 
a  productive  relation  with  it.  The  proof-sheets 
of  "A  Small  Boy  and  Others"  have  been  coming 
in  upon  me  rapidly — all  but  the  very  last;  and  it 
ought,  by  the  end  of  next  month  at  furthest,  to 
burst  upon  the  world.  Of  course  I  shall  have 
advance  copies  sent  promptly  to  you  and  to  Irving 
Street ;  but,  with  this,  I  intensely  want  you  to  take 
into  account  that  the  Book  was  written  through  all 
these  months  of  hampering  and  baffling  illness. 
It  went  so  haltingly  and  worriedly  even  last  winter 
(as  distinguished  from  anything  I  was  able  to  do 
in  the  summer  and  could  get  at  all  during  the  last 
afflicted  three  or  four  months,)  last  winter  having 
really  been  a  much  more  difficult  time  than  I  could 
currently  confess  to,  or  than  dear  Bill  and  Alice 
probably  got  any  sense  of.  The  point  is  at  any 
rate  that  the  Book  is  now,  under  whatever  dis 
advantages,  wholly  done,  and  that  if  it  seems 
"good"  in  spite  of  these,  the  proof  of  my  powers, 
when  my  powers  have  really  worked  off  more  of 
the  heritage  of  woe  of  the  last  three  years,  will  be 
but  the  more  substantial.  A  very  considerable  lot 


290       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1913 

of  "Notes  of  a  Son  etc."  is  done,  and  I  am  now 
practically  back  at  it  with  this  appearance  of  a 
free  little  field  in  spite  of  everything.  ...  I  wel 
come  immensely  (what  I  didn't  mention  to  your 
Mother — waiting  to  do  it  thus)  the  valuable  and 
delightful  little  collection  received  from  you  of 
your  Grandfather's  correspondence  with  Emer 
son.  What  beautiful  and  characteristic  things  in 
it  and  how  I  hope  to  be  able  to  use  the  best  of  these, 
on  your  Grandfather's  part  at  least.  As  regards 
Emerson's  side  of  the  matter  I  doubt  whether  I 
can  do  enough  (in  the  way  of  extracts  from  him) 
to  make  it  even  necessary  for  me  to  apply  to  Ed 
ward  for  licence.  I  think  I  can  hope  but  at  the 
most  to  summarise,  or  give  the  sense  of,  some  of 
Emerson's  passages;  the  reason  of  this  being  my 
absolute  presumable  want  of  space.  The  Book 
will  have  to  be  a  longer  one  than  "A  Small  Boy," 
but  even  with  this  there  must  be  limits  involving 
suppressions  and  omissions.  My  own  text  I  can't 
help  attaching  enough  sense  and  importance  and 
value  to,  not  to  want  to  keep  that  too  utterly  un 
der,  and  I  am  more  and  more  moved  to  give  all  of 
your  Grandfather,  on  his  vivid  and  original  side, 
that  I  possibly  can.  Add  to  this  all  the  applica 
tion,  of  an  illustrative  kind,  that  I  can't  but  see 
myself  making  of  your  Dad's  letters,  and  I  see 
little  room  for  any  one  else's;  though  what  I  most 
deplore  my  meagre  provision  of  is  those  of  your 
Aunt  Alice,  written  to  our  parents  mainly  during 
her  times,  and  especially  her  final  time,  in  Europe. 
The  poverty  of  this  resource  cuts  from  under  my 
feet  almost  all  ground  for  doing  much,  as  I  had 
rather  hoped  in  a  manner  to  do,  with  her.  .  .  . 

Jan.  23rd,  1913.  I  have  been  unable  to  go  on 
with  this  these  several  days,  and  yet  also  unwilling 
to  let  it  go  without  saying  a  few  more  things  I 
wanted — so  the  long  letter  I  have  got  off  to  your 
Mother  will  precede  it  by  longer  than  I  meant. 


AET.  GO     TO  HENRY  JAMES,  JUNIOR       291 

I  still  write,  under  my  disabilities  of  damaged 
body,  with  difficulty  (I  mean  perform  the  act  of 
writing,)  but  this  is  diminishing  substantially 
though  slowly— and  I  mainly  mention  it  to  extenu 
ate  these  clumsy  characters. 

My  conditions  (of  situation  etc.)  here  meanwhile 
(this  winter) — I  mean  these  admirable  and  ample 
two  rooms  southward  over  the  River,  so  still  and 
yet  so  animated— are  ideal  for  work.     Some  other 
time  I  will  explain  it  to  you— so  far  as  you  won't 
have  noted  it  for  yourself— how  and  why  it  is  that 
I  come  to  be  so  little  beforehand  financially.     My 
fatally  interrupted  production  of  fiction  began  it, 
six  years  or  more  ago— and  that  began,  so  utterly 
against  my  preconception  of  such  an  effect,  when 
I  addressed  myself  to  the  so  much  longer  and  more 
arduous  and  more  fatal-to-everything-else  prepara 
tion  of  my  "edition"  than  had  been  measurable  in 
advance.     That  long  period  cut  dreadfully  into 
current  gains— through  complete  arrest  of  other 
current  labour;  and  when  it  was  at  last  ended  I 
had  only  time  to  do  two  small  books  (The  Finer 
Grain  and  The  Outcry)  before  the  disaster  of  my 
long  illness  of  Jan.  1910  descended  upon  me  and 
laid  a  paralysis  on  everything.    This  hideous  Her- 
petic  episode  and  its  developments  have  been  of 
the  absolute  continuity  of  that,  as  they  now  make 
it  (I  hope),  dire  but  departing  Climax;  and  they 
have  represented  an  interminable  arrest  of  literary 
income   (to  speak  of.)     Now  that  I  can  look  to 
apparently  again  getting  back  to  decent  continuity 
of  work  it  becomes  vital  for  me  to  aim  at  returning 
to  the  production  of  the  Novel,  my  departure  from 
which,  with  its  heart-breaking  loss  of  time,  was  a 
catastrophe,    a   perversity   and    fatality,    so   little 
dreamed  of  by  me  or  intended.     I  yearn  for  it  in 
tellectually,  and  with  all  the  force  of  my  "genius" 
and  imagination — artistically  in  short— and  only 
when  this  relation  is  renewed  shall  I  be  again  on 


LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1913 

a  normal  basis.  Only  how  I  want  to  complete 
"Notes  of  a  Son  and  Brother"  with  the  last  per 
fection  first!  Which  is  what  I  shall,  I  trust, 
during  the  next  three  or  four  months  do,  with  far 
greater  rapidity  than  I  have  done  the  first  Book — 
for  all  last  winter  and  spring  my  forenoon,  my 
working  hours,  were  my  worst,  and  for  long  times 
so  bad,  and  my  later  ones  the  better,  whereas  it  is 
now  the  other  way  round. 

Jan.  28th.  I  have  had,  alas,  dearest  Harry,  to 
break  this  off  and  not  take  it  up  again — through 
blighted  (bed-ridden)  late  afternoons  and  whole 
evenings — my  only  letter-writing  time  unless  I 
steal  precious  dictation-hours  from  Miss  Bosan- 
quet  and  the  Book.  .  .  .  My  vitality,  my  still  suf 
ficient  cluster  of  vital  "assets,"  to  say  nothing  of 
my  will  to  live  and  to  write,  assert  themselves  in 
spite  of  everything.  This  is  5.15  on  a  dismal  wet 
afternoon;  I  have  been  out,  but  I  came  in  again 
on  purpose  to  get  this  off  by  to-morrow's, 
Wednesday's  post.  This  apartment  grows  in 
grace — nothing  really  could  have  been  better  for 
me.  I  went  into  that  long  account,  just  above,  of 
the  reasons  why  through  the  frustration  of  fond  Fic 
tion  I  have  (so  much  illness  so  aiding)  sunk  to  this 
momentary  gene,  I  wanted  to  tell  you,  as  against 
the  appearance  of  too  squalid  a  helplessness — for 
an  early  return  to  fond  fiction  will  alter  every 
thing.  .  .  .  But  what  an  endless  sordid,  illegible 
appeal !  Take  it,  dearest  Harry,  in  all  indulgence, 
from  your  lately  so  much-tried  and  perhaps  a  lit 
tle  nervously  over-anxious  (by  the  effect  of  so 
much  suffering,)  but  all  unconquered  and  devoted 
old  Uncle, 

HENRY  JAMES. 

P.S.  A  beautiful  letter  from  your  Mother  of 
Jan.  13th  (on  receipt  of  my  cable)  has  just  come 
in.  All  tenderest  love. 


AET.  69     TO  MISS  GRACE  NORTON  293 

To  Miss  Grace  Norton. 

Dictated. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 

Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

Feb.  6th,  1913. 
Dearest  old  friend! 

Don't  shudder,  I  beg  you,  at  the  sight  of 
this  grim  legibility — even  when  you  compare  it 
with  your  own  exquisite  mastery  of  legibility 
without  grimness!  Let  me  down  easily,  in  view 
of  the  long,  the  oh  so  much  too  long,  ordeal  that 
has  pressed  on  me,  and  that  has  so  hampered  and 
hindered  and  harrowed  me,  that  almost  any  sort 
of  making  shift  to  project  my  sentiments  to  a  dis 
tance  is  a  sort  of  victory  \von,  or  patch  of  ground 
wrested,  from  darkness  and  the  devil!  I  am  slowly 
slowly  getting  better  of  an  interminable  compli 
cated  siege  of  pain  and  distress ;  but  it  has  left  me 
with  arrears  of  every  sort  piled  up  around  me  like 
the  wild  fragments  of  some  convulsion  of  Nature, 
and  I  pick  my  way,  or  grope  it,  or  even  feebly  and 
fatally  fail  of  it,  as  I  best  can.  There  are  things 
that  help,  withal,  and  one  of  these  has  been  to  re 
ceive  your  all-benignant  little  letter  of  two  days 
ago.  I  needn't  reaffirm  to  you  at  this  time  of  day 
that  all  your  long  patiences  and  fidelities,  all  your 
generosities  and  gallantries  of  always  rallying  yet 
again,  are  always  more  beau; iful  to  me  than  I  ever 
seem  to  have  managed  punctually  enough  to  help 
you,  if  need  be,  to  feel — especially  as  of  any  such 
urgent  "help"  there  need  be  no  question  now!  You 
have  had  enough  news  of  me  from  over  your  way, 
I  infer,  pretty  dismal  though  it  may  have  been, 
for  me  not  to  want  fatuously  to  dose  you  with  it 
(I  mean  given  its  bitter  quality)  further  or  at  first 
hand ;  therefore  let  me  rather  convey  to  you  at  first 
hand  that  I  am  getting  into  distinctly  less  pitiful 


294       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1913 

case.  ...  I  have  been  too  complicated  a  sufferer 
for  it  to  clear  at  every  point  at  the  same  time ;  but 
the  general  sense  is  ever  so  much  better — and  I 
am  going  to  ask  of  your  charity  to  let  Alice,  over 
the  way,  see  these  yearning  pages,  for  her  better 
reassurance — even  if  I  have  after  a  fashion  man 
aged,  just  of  late,  to  reassure  her  more  directly. 
I  want  her  to  have  all  the  testimony  I  can  treat 
her,  and,  by  the  same  token,  my  dear  Grace,  treat 
you  to. 

Your  little  letter  breathes  all  your  characteristic 
courage  and  philosophy — while,  I  confess,  at  the 
same  time,  it  fills  out — or  rather  perhaps,  more 
exactly,  further  removes  the  veil  from — my  in  its 
very  nature  vivid  enough  picture  of  your  fairly 
august  state  of  lone  Cambridge  survivorship.  I 
admired  you  on  that  state  at  closer  quarters  win 
ter  before  last — even  though  my  testimony  to  my 
so  doing  was  at  that  time,  from  poor  physical  in 
terferences,  hampered  and  awkward;  but  History 
is  so  interesting  when  one  is  able  to  follow  with 
closeness  a  particular  attaching  strain  of  it  that 
my  imagination,  my  intention,  my  affection  and 
fidelity,  hang  and  hover  about  your  own  particular 
noble  exhibition  of  it  as  intelligently  (yes,  my 
dear  Grace,  as  intelligently,  nothing  less,  I  insist) 
as  you  could  possibly  desire  or  put  up  with!  Your 
letter  fills  in  again  for  me  a  passage  or  two  of  de 
tail — so  that  I  feel  myself  the  more  possessed  and 
qualified.  .  .  .  What  I  mean  is  above  all  that 
even  this  imperfect  snatch  of  talk  with  you  is  dear 
and  blest  to  me,  and  that  if  by  hook  or  by  crook, 
and  through  whatever  densities  of  medium  and  dis 
tance,  I  draw  out  a  little  the  sense  of  relation  with 
you,  it  will  have  been  better  than  utter  frustra 
tion.  I  look  out  here,  while  I  thus  communicate, 
from  a  bit  of  the  old-time  stretch  of  riverside 
Chelsea,  my  first  far-away  glimpse  or  sense  of 
which  has,  like  so  many  of  my  first  London 


AET.  69     TO  MISS  GRACE  NORTON          295 

glimpses  and  senses  (my  very  first  of  all,  I  mean,) 
a  never-lost  association  with  you  and  yours,  or  at 
least  with  yours  and  thereby  with  you :  which  means 
my  having  come  here  first  of  all,  one  day  of  the 
early  spring  of  1869,  with  Charles  and  Susan,  they 
having  in  their  kindness  brought  me  to  call  with 
them  on  the  great  (if  great!)  and  strange  and 
more  or  less  sinister  D.  G.  Rossetti,  whom  Charles 
was  in  good  relation  with,  difficult  as  that  appeared 
already  then  to  have  become  for  most  people,  and 
my  impression  of  whom  on  the  occasion,  with  every 
thing  else  of  it,  I  have  always  closely  retained. 
Part  of  it  was  just  this  impression  of  the  really 
interesting  and  delightful  old  Thames-side  Chel 
sea,  over  the  admirable  water-view  of  which  these 
windows  now  hang — quite  as  if  I  had  then  secretly 
vowed  to  myself  that  some  window  of  mine  some 
day  should.  The  River  is  more  pompously  em 
banked  (making  an  admirable  walk  all  the  way  to 
Westminster,  of  the  most  salutary  value  to  me 
when  I  can  at  the  soberest  of  paces  attempt  it;) 
but  the  sense  of  it  all  goes  back,  as  I  say,  to  my 
fond  participation  in  that  prehistoric  Queen's 
Gate  Terrace  Winter.  However,  I  am  drenching 
you  with  numbered  pages — I  ask  no  credit  for  the 
number! — and  I  almost  sit  with  you  while  you 
read  them;  not  exactly  watching  for  a  glow  of 
rapture  on  your  face,  but  still,  on  the  whole,  see 
ing  you  take  them,  without  a  frown,  for  a  good 
intention  and  a  stopgap  for  something  better. 
You  tell  me  almost  nothing  of  yourself,  but  all  my 
sympathy  and  fidelity  wait  on  you  (sympathy 
always  can  come  in  somewhere!)  and  I  am  yours, 
my  dear  Grace,  always  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


296       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1013 


To  Mrs.  Henry  White. 
Dictated. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

Feb.  23rd,  1913. 
My  dear  old  Friend, 

Let  this  mechanic  form  and  vulgar  legi 
bility  notify  you  a  little  at  the  start  that  I  am  in 
rather  a  hampered  and  hindered  state,  and  that 
that  must  plead  both  for  my  delay  in  acknowledg 
ing  your  dear  faithful  letter  of  the  New  Year 
time,  and  for  my  at  last  having  to  make  the  best 
of  this  too  impersonal  art.  ...  I  won't  go  into 
the  history  of  my  woes — all  the  more  that  I  really 
hope  I  have  shuffled  the  worst  of  them  off.  Even 
in  this  most  recent  form  they  have  been  part  and 
parcel  of  the  grave  illness  that  overtook  me  as 
long  ago  as  at  the  New  Year,  1910,  and  with  a 
very  imperfect  recovery  from  which  I  was  strug 
gling  during  those  weary  American  months  of 
winter-before-last  when  we  planned  so  in  vain  that 
I  should  come  to  you  in  Washington.  I  have 
deeply  regretted,  ever  since,  my  failure  of  that 
pleasure — all  the  more  that  I  don't  see  it  now  as 
conceivably  again  within  my  reach.  I  am  restored 
to  this  soil,  for  whatever  may  remain  to  me  of  my 
mortal  career.  The  grand  swing  across  the  globe, 
which  you  and  Harry  will  again  nobly  accomplish 
— again  and  yet  again — now  simply  mocks  at  my 
weakness  and  my  reduced  resources.  Besides,  I 
am  but  too  thankful  to  have  a  refuge  in  which  con 
tinuously  to  crouch.  Please  fix  well  in  your  mind 
that  continuity — as  making  it  easy  for  you  some 
day  to  find  me  here.  The  continuity  is  broken 
simply  by  my  reverting  to  the  country  for  the 


AET.  69       TO  MRS.  HENRY  WHITE  297 

summer  and  autumn — a  mere  change  from  the 
blue  bed  to  the  brown,  and  then  from  the  brown 
back  again  to  this  Thames-side  perch,  which  I  call 
the  blue.  I  hang  here,  for  six  months,  straight 
over  the  River  and  find  it  delightful  and  interest 
ing,  at  once  ever  so  quiet  and  ever  so  animated. 
The  River  has  a  quantity  of  picturesque  and 
dramatic  life  and  motion  that  one  had  never  ap 
preciated  till  one  had  thrown  oneself  on  it  de  con- 
fiance.  But  it's  another  London,  this  old  Chelsea 
of  simplifications  and  sacrifices,  from  the  world  in 
which  I  so  like  to  feel  that  I  for  so  long  lived  more 
or  less  with  you.  I  feel  somehow  as  much  away 
from  that  now  as  you  and  Harry  must  feel  amid 
your  new  Washington  horizons — and  it  has  of 
itself,  for  that  matter,  gone  to  pieces  under  the 
sweep  of  the  big  broom  of  Time,  which  has  scat 
tered  it  without  ceremony.  A  few  vague  and 
altered  relics  of  it  occasionally  dangle  for  a  mo 
ment  before  me.  I  was  going  to  say  "cross  my 
path" — but  I  haven't  now  such  a  thing  as  a  path, 
or  it  goes  such  a  very  few  steps.  I  try  meanwhile 
to  project  myself  in  imagination  into  your  Wash 
ington  existence — and,  besides  your  own  allusions 
to  it,  a  passing  visit  a  few  days  since  from  Walter 
Berry  helped  me  a  little  to  fix  the  shining  vision. 
W.  B.  had  been,  I  gathered,  but  a  day  or  two  near 
you,  and  wasn't  in  possession  of  many  particulars. 
Beyond  this,  too,  though  you  shine  to  me  you  shine 
a  bit  fearfully — for  I  can't  rid  myself  (in  a  world 
of  Chelsea  limits  and  fashions)  of  a  sense  of  the 
formidable ',  the  somehow — at  least  for  the  likes  of 
mel — difficult  and  bristling  and  glaring,  side  of 
the  American  conditions.  However,  you  of  course 
lightly  ride  the  whirlwind — or  at  any  rate  have 
only  as  much  or  as  little  of  the  storms  as  you  will, 
and  can  pick  out  of  it  only  such  musical  thunder- 
rolls  and  most  purely  playful  forked  lightnings 
as  suit  you  best.  What  I  mean  is  that  here,  after 


LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1913 

a  fashion,  a  certain  part  of  the  work  of  discrimina 
tion  and  selection  and  primary  clearing  of  the 
ground  is  already  done  for  one,  in  a  manner  that 
enables  one  to  begin,  for  one's  self,  further  on  or 
higher  up ;  whereas  over  there  I  seemed  to  see  my 
self,  speaking  only  from  my  own  experience,  often 
beginning  so  "low  down,"  just  in  that  way  of  sift 
ing  and  selecting,  that  all  one's  time  went  to  it  and 
one  was  spent  before  arriving  at  any  very  charming 
altitude.  This  you  will  find  obscure,  but  study  it 
well — though  strictly  in  private,  so  as  not  to  give 
me  away  as  a  sniffy  critic.  Heaven  knows  I  in 
dulge  in  the  most  remorseless  habits  of  criticism 
here — even  if  I  make  no  great  public  use  of  them, 
through  the  increasing  privacy  and  antiquity  of 
my  life.  I  kind  of  wonder  about  the  bearing  of 
the  queer  Democratic  regime  that  seems  as  yet 
so  obscurely  to  loom  upon  any  latent  possibilities 
(that  might  have  been)  on  Harry's  and  your 
"career" — just  as  I  wonder  what  unutterable 
queerness  may  not,  as  a  feature  of  the  whole  conun 
drum,  "representatively"  speaking,  before  long 
cause  us  all  here  to  sit  up  and  stare:  one  or  two 
such  startling  rumours  about  the  matter,  I  trust 
groundless,  having  already  had  something  of  that 
effect.  But  we  must  all  wait,  mustn't  we?  and  I 
do  indeed  envy  you  both  your  so  interesting  oppor 
tunity  for  doing  so,  in  a  front  box  at  the  comedy, 
or  tragedy,  the  fine  old  American  show,  that  is, 
whatever  turn  it  takes:  it  will  all  give  you,  these 
next  months,  so  much  to  look  at  and  talk  about 
and  expertly  appreciate.  Lord,  how  I  wish  I 
were  in  a  state  or  situation  to  be  dining  with  you 
to-night!  I  am  dying,  really,  to  see  your  House 
— which  means  alas  that  I  shall  die  without  doing 
so.  No  glimmer  of  a  view  of  the  new  Presidential 
family  as  a  White  House  group  has  come  my  way 
— so  that  I  sit  in  darkness  there  as  all  around,  and 
feel  you  can  but  say  that  it  serves  me  right  not 


AET.  69      TO  MRS.  HENRY  WHITE  299 

to  have  managed  my  life  better — especially  with 
your  grand  example!    Amen,  amen!  ... 

I  rejoice  to  hear  of  your  having  had  your  grand 
children  with  you,  though  you  speak,  bewilder- 
ingly,  as  if  they  had  leaped  across  the  globe  in 
happy  exemption  from  parents — or  a  parent. 
However,  nothing  does  surprise  me  now — almost 
any  kind  of  globe-leaping  affects  me,  in  my  trou, 
as  natural,  possible,  nay  probable!  I  pat  Harry 
ever  so  affectionately  on  the  back,  I  hold  you  both 
in  the  most  affectionate  remembrance,  and  am 
yours  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  William  James. 
Dictated. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 
March  5th,  1913. 

Dearest  Alice, 

An  extreme  blessing  to  me  is  your  dear 
letter  from  Montreal.  I  had  lately  much  longed 
to  hear  from  you — and  when  do  I  not? — and  had 
sent  you  a  message  to  that  effect  in  writing  to 
Harry  a  week  ago.  Really  to  have  some  of  your 
facts  and  your  current  picture  straight  from  your 
self  is  better  than  anything  else.  .  .  . 

I  write  you  this  in  conditions  that  give  me  for 
the  hour,  this  morning-hour,  toward  noon,  such  a 
sense  of  the  possible  beneficence  of  Climate,  relent 
ing  ethereal  mildness,  so  long  and  so  far  as  one  can 
at  all  come  by  it.  We  have  been  having,  as  I  be 
lieve  you  have,  a  blessedly  mild  winter,  and  the 
climax  at  this  moment  is  a  kind  of  all  uncannily 
premature  May-day  of  softness  and  beauty.  I  sit 
here  with  my  big  south  window  open  to  the  River, 


300       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1913 

open  wide,  and  a  sort  of  healing  balm  of  sunshine 
flooding  the  place.  Truly  I  feel  I  did  well  for 
myself  in  perching — even  thus  modestly  for  a  "real 
home" — just  on  this  spot.  My  beginnings  of 
going  out  again  have  consisted,  up  to  to-day,  in 
four  successive  excursions  in  a  Bath-chair — every 
command  of  which  resource  is  installed  but  little 
more  than  round  the  corner  from  me;  and  the 
Bath-chair  habit  or  vice  is,  I  fear,  only  too  capable 
now  of  marking  me  for  its  own.  This  of  course 
not  "really" — my  excellent  legs  are,  thank  heaven, 
still  too  cherished  a  dependence  and  resource  and 
remedy  to  me  in  the  long  run,  or  rather  in  the  long 
(or  even  the  short)  crawl;  only,  if  you've  never 
tried  it,  the  B.C.  has  a  sweet  appeal  of  its  own,  for 
contemplative  ventilation;  and  I  builded  better 
than  I  knew  when  I  happened  to  settle  here,  just 
where,  in  all  London,  the  long,  long,  smooth  and 
really  charming  and  beguiling  Thames-side  Em 
bankment  offers  it  a  quite  ideal  course  for  com 
bined  publicity  (in  the  sense  of  variety)  and  tran 
quillity  (in  the  sense  of  jostling  against  nobody 
and  nothing  and  not  having  to  pick  one's  steps.) 
Add  to  this  that  just  at  hand,  straight  across  the 
River,  by  the  ample  and  also  very  quiet  Albert 
Bridge,  lies  the  large  convenient  and  in  its  way 
also  very  beguiling  Battersea  Park:  which  you  may 
but  too  unspeakably  remember  our  making  some 
thing  of  the  circuit  of  with  William  on  that  day  of 
the  so  troubled  fortnight  in  London,  after  our  re 
turn  from  Nauheim,  when  Theodate  Pope  called 
for  us  in  her  great  car  and  we  came  first  to  just 
round  the  corner  here,  where  he  and  I  sat  waiting 
together  outside  while  you  and  she  went  into  Car- 
lyle's  house.  Every  moment  of  that  day  has  again 
and  again  pressed  back  upon  me  here — and  how, 
rather  suddenly,  we  had,  in  the  park,  where  we 
went  afterwards,  to  pull  up,  that  is  to  turn  and 
get  back  to  the  sinister  little  Symonds's  as  soon 


AET.  69    TO  MRS.  WILLIAM  JAMES  301 

as  possible.  However.  I  don't  know  why  I  should 
stir  that  dismal  memory.  The  way  the  "general 
location"  seems  propitious  to  me  ought  to  succeed 
in  soothing  the  nerves  of  association.  This  last  I 
keep  saying — I  mean  in  the  sense  that,  especially 
on  such  a  morning  as  this,  I  quite  adore  this  form 
of  residence  (this  particular  perch  I  mean)  in  order 
to  make  fully  sure  of  what  I  have  of  soothing  and 
reassuring  to  tell  you.  .  .  .  Lamb  House  hangs 
before  me  from  this  simplified  standpoint  here  as 
a  rather  complicated  haze ;  but  I  tend,  I  truly  feel, 
to  overdo  that  view  of  it — and  shan't  settle  to  any 
view  at  all  for  another  year.  It  is  the  mere  worri- 
ment  of  dragged-out  unwellness  that  makes  me 
see  things  in  wrong  dimensions.  They  right  them 
selves  perfectly  at  better  periods.  But  I  mustn't 
yet  discourse  too  long:  I  am  still  under  restriction 
as  to  uttering  too  much  vocal  sound;  and  I  feel 
how  guarding  and  nursing  the  vocal  resource  is 
beneficial  and  helpful.  I  don't  speak  to  you  of 
Harry — there  would  be  too  much  to  say  and  he 
must  shine  upon  you  even  from  N.Y.  with  so  big 
a  light  of  his  own.  I  take  him,  and  I  take  you 
all,  to  have  been  much  moved  by  Woodrow  Wil 
son's  fine,  and  clearly  so  sincere,  even  if  so  partial 
and  provisional  address  yesterday.  It  isn't  he,  but 
it  is  the  so  long  and  so  deeply  provincialised  and 
diseducated  and,  I  fear — in  respect  to  individ 
ual  activity  and  operative,  that  is  administrative 
value — very  below-the-mark  "personalities"  of  the 
Democratic  party,  that  one  is  pretty  dismally 
anxious  about.  An  administration  that  has  to 
"take  on"  Bryan  looks,  from  the  overhere  point 
of  view,  like  the  queerest  and  crudest  of  all  things ! 
But  of  course  I  may  not  know  what  I'm  talking 
about  save  when  I  thus  embrace  you  all,  almost 
principally  Peg — and  your  Mother! — again  and 
am  your  ever  affectionate 

HENRY  JAMES. 


302       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1913 


To  Bruce  Porter. 

The  beginning  and  end  of  this  letter  are  accidentally 
missing. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 
[March,  1913.] 

...  a  better  one  than  for  a  long,  long  while; 
and  it  enables  this  poor  scrawl  thus  to  try  to  hang 
itself,  for  the  hour,  however  awkwardly,  round 
your  neck.  What  was  wonderful  and  beautiful  in 
your  letter  of  last  November  9th  (now  so  hand 
somely  and  liveably  before  me — I  adore  your 
hand)  is  that  it  was  prompted,  to  the  last  perfec 
tion,  by  a  sublime  sense  of  what  was  just  exactly 
my  case  at  that  hour,  so  that  when  I  think  of  this, 
and  of  how  I  felt  it  when  the  letter  came,  and  of 
how  exquisite  and  interesting  that  essential  fact 
made  it  (over  and  above  its  essential  charm,)  I 
don't  know  whether  I  am  most  amazed  or  ashamed 
at  my  not  having  as  nearly  as  possible  just  then 
and  there  acclaimed  the  touching  marvel.  But  in 
truth  this  very  fact  of  the  justesse  of  your  globe- 
spanning  divination  is  the  real  answer  to  that. 
You  wrote  because  you  so  beautifully  and  suddenly 
saw  from  afar  (and  so  admirably  wanted  to  lay 
your  hand  on  me  in  consequence:)  saw,  I  mean, 
that  I  was  in  some  acute  trouble,  and  had  the 
heavenly  wish  to  signal  to  me  your  sympathetic 
sense  of  it.  So,  as  I  say,  your  admirable  page 
itself  tells  me,  and  so  at  the  hour  I  hailed  the  sweet 
phenomenon.  I  had  had  a  very  bad  summer,  but 
hoped  (and  supposed)  I  was  more  or  less  throw 
ing  it  off.  But  the  points  I  make  are,  1st,  that 
your  psychic  sense  of  the  situation  had  absolutely 
coincided  in  time,  and  in  California,  with  what 
was  going  on  at  Lamb  House,  on  the  other  side 
of  the  globe;  and  2nd,  after  all,  that  precisely  the 


AET.  69  TO  BRUCE  PORTER  3Q3 

condition  so  revealed  to  you  was  what  made  it  too 
difficult  for  me  to  vibrate  back  to  you  with  any 
proportionate  punctuality  or  grace.  Only  this, 
you  see,  is  my  long-delayed  and  comparatively  dull 
vibration.  Here  I  am,  at  any  rate,  dearest  Bruce, 
taking  you  as  straight  again  to  my  aged  heart  as 
these  poor  clumsy  methods  will  allow.  Thank 
God  meanwhile  I  have  no  supernatural  fears  about 
you !  nor  vain  dreams  that  you  are  not  in  the  living 
equilibrium,  now  as  ever,  that  becomes  you  best, 
and  of  which  you  have  the  brave  secret.  I  am  in 
capable  of  doubting  of  this — though  after  all  I  now 
feel  how  exceedingly  I  should  like  you  to  tell  me 
so  even  if  but  on  one  side  of  a  sheet  like  this  so 
handsome  (I  come  back  to  that!)  example  that  I 
have  before  me.  You  can  do  so  much  with  one 
side  of  a  sheet.  But  oh  for  a  better  approach  to 
a  real  personal  jawl  It  is  indeed  most  strange, 
this  intimate  relation  of  ours  that  has  been  doomed 
to  consist  of  a  grain  of  contact  (et  encore  I)  to  a 
ton  of  separation.  It's  to  the  honour  of  us  any 
how  that  we  can  and  do  keep  touching  without  the 
more  platitudinous  kind  of  demonstration  of  it. 
Still — demonstrate,  as  I  say,  for  three  minutes. 
Feel  a  little,  to  help  you  to  it,  how  tenderly  I  lay 
my  hands  on  you.  This  address  will  find  me  till 
the  end  of  June — but  Lamb  House  of  course  al 
ways.  I  have  taken  three  or  four  (or  five)  years' 
lease  of  a  small  flat  on  this  pleasant  old  Chelsea 
riverside  to  hibernate  in  for  the  future.  I  return 
to  the  country  for  five  or  six  months  of  summer  and 
autumn,  but  can't  stand  the  utter  solitude  and  con 
finement  of  it  from  December  to  the  spring's  end. 
Ah,  had  we  only  a  climate! — yours  or  Fanny 
Stevenson's  (if  she  is  still  the  exploiter  of  climates) 
—I  believe  I  should  be  all  right  then!  Tell  me  of 
her — and  tell  me  of  your  Mother.  I  am  sending 
you  by  the  Scribners  a  volume  of  reminiscential 
twaddle.  , 


LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1913 


To  Lady  Ritchie. 

Lady  Ritchie  had  at  this  time  thoughts  (afterwards 
abandoned)  of  going  to  America.  She  was  the  "Princess 
Royal,"  of  course,  as  the  daughter  of  Thackeray. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

March  25th,  1913. 
Dearest  old  Friend! 

I  am  deeply  interested  and  touched  by  your 
letter  from  the  Island! — so  much  so  that  I  shall 
indeed  rush  to  you  this  (day-after-to-morrow) 
Thursday  at  5.15.  Your  idea  is  (as  regards  your 
sainted  Self!)  of  the  bravest  and  most  ingenious, 
but  needing  no  end  of  things  to  be  said  about  it — 
and  I  think  I  shall  be  able  to  say  them  ALLl  The 
furore  you  would  excite  there,  the  glory  in  which 
you  would  swim  (or  sink!)  would  be  of  an  ineffable 
resonance  and  effulgence ;  but  I  fear  it  would  simply 
be  a  fatal  Apotheosis,  a  prostrating  exaltation. 
The  devil  of  the  thing  (for  yourself)  would  be  that 
that  terrific  country  is  in  every  pulse  of  its  being 
and  on  every  inch  of  its  surface  a  roaring  repudia 
tion  and  negation  of  anything  like  Privacy,  and 
of  the  blinding  and  deafening  Publicity  you  might 
come  near  to  perish.  But  we  will  jaw  about  it — 
there  is  so  much  to  say — and  for  Hester  it  would 
be  another  matter:  she  could  ride  the  whirlwind 
and  enjoy,  in  a  manner,  the  storm.  Besides,  she 
isn't  the  Princess  Royal — but  only  a  remove  of  the 
Blood!  Again,  however,  nous  en  causerons — on 
Thursday.  I  shall  so  hug  the  chance.  ...  I  am 
impatient  for  it  and  am  yours  and  the  Child's  all 
so  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


AET.  09     TO  MRS.  WILLIAM  JAMES          305 


To  Mrs.  William  James. 

The  offering  to  Henry  James  from  his  friends  in  Eng 
land  on  his  seventieth  birthday  (April  15,  1913)  took  the 
form  of  a  letter,  a  piece  of  plate  (described  in  the  follow 
ing),  and  a  request  that  he  would  sit  for  his  portrait. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

April  1st,  1913. 
Dearest  Alice, 

Today  comes  blessedly  your  letter  of  the 
18th,  written  after  the  receipt  of  my  cable  to  you 
in  answer  to  your  preceding  one  of  the  6th  (after 
you  had  heard  from  Robert  Allerton  of  my  ill 
ness.)  You  will  have  been  reassured  further— 
I  mean  beyond  my  cable — by  a  letter  I  lately 
despatched  to  Bill  and  Alice  conjointly,  in  which 
I  told  them  of  my  good  and  continued  improve 
ment.  I  am  going  on  very  well,  increasingly  so— 
in  spite  of  my  having  to  reckon  with  so  much 
chronic  pectoral  pain,  now  so  seated  and  settled, 
of  the  queer  "falsely  anginal"  but  none  the  less, 
when  it  is  bad,  distressing  order.  .  .  .  Moreover 
too  it  is  astonishing  with  how  much  pain  one  can 
with  long  practice  learn  constantly  and  not  too 
defeatedly  to  live.  Therefore,  dearest  Alice,  don't 
think  of  this  as  too  black  a  picture  of  my  situation: 
it  is  so  much  brighter  a  one  than  I  have  thought 
at  'certain  bad  moments  and  seasons  of  the  past 
that  I  should  probably  ever  be  able  to  paint.  The 
mere  power  to  work  in  such  measure  as  I  can  is 
an  infinite  help  to  a  better  consciousness — and 
though  so  impaired  compared  to  what  it  used  to  be, 
it  tends  to  grow,  distinctly — which  by  itself  proves 
that  I  have  some  firm  ground  under  my  feet.  And 
I  repeat  to  satiety  that  my  conditions  here  are 
admirably  helpful  and  favouring. 


306       LETTERS  OF  HENRY   JAMES       1913 

You  can  see,  can't  you?  how  strange  and  des 
perate  it  would  be  to  "chuck"  everything  up, 
Lamb  House,  servants,  Miss  Bosanquet,  this  newly 
acquired  and  prized  resource,  to  come  over,  by  a 
formidable  and  expensive  journey,  to  spend  a  sum 
mer  in  the  (at  best)  to  me  torrid  and  (the  in 
most  inside  of  95  apart)  utterly  arid  and  vacuous 
Cambridge.  Dearest  Alice,  I  could  come  back  to 
America  (could  be  carried  back  on  a  stretcher)  to 
die — but  never,  never  to  live.  To  say  how  the 
question  affects  me  is  dreadfully  difficult  because 
of  its  appearing  so  to  make  light  of  you  and  the 
children — but  when  I  think  of  how  little  Boston 
and  Cambridge  were  of  old  ever  my  affair,  or  any 
thing  but  an  accident,  for  me,  of  the  parental  life 
there  to  which  I  occasionally  and  painfully  and 
losingly  sacrificed,  I  have  a  superstitious  terror  of 
seeing  them  at  the  end  of  time  again  stretch  out 
strange  inevitable  tentacles  to  draw  me  back  and 
destroy  me.  And  then  I  could  never  either  make 
or  afford  the  journey  (I  have  no  margin  at  all  for 
that  degree  of  effort.)  But  you  will  have  under 
stood  too.  well — without  my  saying  more — how 
little  I  can  dream  of  any  deplacement  now — 
especially  for  the  sake  of  a  milieu  in  which  you 
and  Peg  and  Bill  and  Alice  and  Aleck  would  be 
burdened  with  the  charge  of  making  up  all  my 
life.  .  .  .  You  see  my  capital— yielding  all  my 
income,  intellectual,  social,  associational,  on  the  old 
investment  of  so  many  years — my  capital  is  here, 
and  to  let  it  all  slide  would  be  simply  to  become 
bankrupt.  Oh  if  you  only,  on  the  other  hand,  you 
and  Peg  and  Aleck,  could  walk  beside  my  bath- 
chair  down  this  brave  Thames-side  I  would  get 
back  into  it  again  (it  was  some  three  weeks  ago 
dismissed,)  and  half  live  there  for  the  sake  of  your 
company.  I  have  a  kind  of  sense  that  you  would 
be  able  to  live  rather  pleasantly  near  me  here — if 
you  could  once  get  planted.  But  of  course  I  on 


AET.  70     TO  MRS.  WILLIAM  JAMES          307 

my   side   understand   all   your   present   complica 
tions. 

April  16tli\  It's  really  too  dismal,  dearest  Alice, 
that,  breaking  off  the  above  at  the  hour  I  had  to, 
I  have  been  unable  to  go  on  with  it  for  so  many 
days.  It's  now  more  than  a  fortnight  old;  still, 
though  my  check  was  owing  to  my  having  of  a 
sudden,  just  as  I  rested  my  pen,  to  drop  perversely 
into  a  less  decent  phase  (than  I  reported  to  you  at 
the  moment  of  writing)  and  [from  which  I]  have 
had  with  some  difficulty  to  wriggle  up  again,  I  am 
now  none  the  less  able  to  send  you  no  too  bad  news. 
I  have  wriggled  up  a  good  deal,  and  still  keep 
believing  in  my  capacity  to  wriggle  up  in  general. 
.  .  .  Suffice  if  for  the  moment  that  I  just  couldn't, 
for  the  time,  drive  the  pen  myself — when  I  am 
"bad"  I  feel  too  demoralised,  too  debilitated,  for 
this;  and  it  doesn't  at  all  do  for  me  then  to  push 
against  the  grain.  Don't  feel,  all  the  same,  that  if 
I  resort  this  morning  to  the  present  help,  it  is  be 
cause  I  am  not  feeling  differently — for  I  really 
am  in  an  easier  way  again  (I  mean  of  course 
specifically  and  "anginally"  speaking)  and  the 
circumstances  of  the  hour  a  good  deal  explain  my 
proceeding  thus.  I  had  yesterday  a  Birthday,  an 
extraordinary,  prodigious,  portentous,  quite  public 
Birthday,  of  all  things  in  the  world,  and  it  has  piled 
up  acknowledgments  and  supposedly  delightful 
complications  and  arrears  at  such  a  rate  all  round 
me  that  in  short,  Miss  Bosanquet  being  here,  I  to 
day  at  least  throw  myself  upon  her  aid  for  getting 
on  correspondentially — instead  of  attending  to  my 
proper  work,  which  has,  however,  kept  going  none 
so  badly  in  spite  of  my  last  poor  fortnight.  I  will 
tell  you  in  a  moment  of  my  signal  honours,  but 
want  to  mention  first  that  your  good  note  written 
on  receipt  of  A  Small  Boy  has  meanwhile  come 
to  me  and  by  the  perfect  fulness  of  its  appreciation 
gave  me  the  greatest  joy.  There  are  several  things 


308       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1913 

I  want  to  say  to  you  about  the  shape  and  substance 
of  the  book — and  I  will  yet;  only  now  I  want  to 
get  this  off  absolutely  by  today's  American  post, 
and  tell  you  about  the  Honours,  a  little,  before  you 
wonder,  in  comparative  darkness,  over  whatever 
there  may  have  been  in  the  American  papers  that 
you  will  perhaps  have  seen ;  though  in  two  or  three 
of  the  New  York  ones  more  possibly  than  in  the 
Boston.  I  send  you  by  this  post  a  copy  of  yester 
day's  Times  and  one  of  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette — 
the  two  or  three  passages  in  which,  together,  I 
suppose  to  have  been  more  probably  than  not  re 
produced  in  N.Y.  But  I  send  you  above  all  a  copy 
of  the  really  very  beautiful  Letter  .  .  .  ushering 
in  the  quite  wonderful  array  of  signatures  (as  I 
can't  but  feel)  of  my  testifying  and  "presenting" 
friends:  a  list  of  which  you  perhaps  can't  quite 
measure  the  very  charming  and  distinguished  and 
"brilliant"  character  without  knowing  your  Lon 
don  better.  What  I  wish  I  could  send  you  is  the 
huge  harvest  of  exquisite,  of  splendid  sheaves  of 
flowers  that  converted  a  goodly  table  in  this  room, 
by  the  time  yesterday  was  waning,  into  such  a 
blooming  garden  of  complimentary  colour  as  I 
never  dreamed  I  should,  on  my  own  modest  prem 
ises,  almost  bewilderedly  stare  at,  sniff  at,  all  but 
quite  "cry"  at.  I  think  I  must  and  shall  in  fact 
compass  sending  you  a  photograph  of  the  still 
more  glittering  tribute  dropped  upon  me — a  really 
splendid  "golden  bowl,"  of  the  highest  interest  and 
most  perfect  taste,  which  would,  in  the  extremity 
of  its  elegance,  be  too  proudly  false  a  note  amid 
my  small  belongings  here  if  it  didn't  happen  to  fit, 
or  to  sit,  rather,  with  perfect  grace  and  comfort, 
on  the  middle  of  my  chimney-piece,  where  the 
rather  good  glass  and  some  other  happy  accidents 
of  tone  most  fortunately  consort  with  it.  It  is  a 
very  brave  and  artistic  (exact)  reproduction  of 
a  piece  of  old  Charles  II  plate;  the  bowl  or  cup 


AET.  70     TO  MRS.  WILLIAM  JAMES          309 

having  handles  and  a  particularly  charming  lid 
or  cover,  and  standing  on  an  ample  round  tray  or 
salver ;  the  whole  being  wrought  in  solid  silver-gilt 
and  covered  over  with  quaint  incised  little  figures 
of  a  (in  the  taste  of  the  time)  Chinese  intention. 
In  short  it's  a  very  beautiful  and  honourable  thing 
indeed.  .  .  .  Against  the  giving  to  me  of  the 
Portrait,  presumably  by  Sargent,  if  I  do  succeed 
in  being  able  to  sit  for  it,  I  have  absolutely  and 
successfully  protested.  The  possession,  the  attri 
bution  or  ownership  of  it,  I  have  insisted,  shall  be 
only  their  matter,  that  of  the  subscribing  friends. 
I  am  sending  Harry  a  copy  of  the  Letter  too — but 
do  send  him  on  this  as  well.  You  see  there7  must 
be  good  life  in  me  still  when  I  can  gabble  so  hard. 
The  Book  appears  to  be  really  most  handsomely 
received  hereabouts.  It  is  being  treated  in  fact 
with  the  very  highest  consideration.  I  hope  it  is 
viewed  a  little  in  some  such  mannerly  light  round 
about  yourselves,  but  I  really  call  for  no  "notices" 
whatever.  I  don't  in  the  least  want  'em.  What 
I  do  want  is  to  personally  and  firmly  and  intimate 
ly  encircle  Peg  and  Aleck  and  their  Mother  and 
squeeze  them  as  hard  together  as  is  compatible 
with  squeezing  them  so  tenderly!  With  this  tide 
of  gabble  you  will  surely  feel  that  I  shall  soon  be 
at  you  again.  And  so  I  shall!  Yours,  dearest 
Alice,  and  dearest  all,  ever  so  and  ever  so! 

HENRY  JAMES. 


310       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1913 


To  Percy  Lubbock. 

A  copy  of  H.  J.'s  letter  of  thanks  was  sent  to  each  of 
the  subscribers  to  the  birthday  present.  He  eventually 
preferred  that  their  names  should  be  given  in  a  postscript 
to  his  letter,  which  follows  in  its  final  form. 

Dictated. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 

Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 
April  21st,  1913. 

My  dear  blest  Percy! 

I  enclose  you  herewith  a  sort  of  provisional 
apology  for  a  Form  of  Thanks!  Read  it  and  tell 
me  on  Wednesday,  when  I  count  on  you  at  1.45, 
whether  you  think  it  will  do — as  being  on  the  one 
hand  not  too  pompous  or  important  and  on  the 
other  not  too  free  and  easy.  I  have  tried  to  steer 
a  middle  way  between  hysterical  emotion  and 
marble  immortality!  To  any  emendation  you  sug 
gest  I  will  give  the  eagerest  ear,  though  I  have 
really  considered  and  pondered  my  expression  not 
a  little,  studying  the  pro's  and  con's  as  to  each  tour. 
However,  we  will  earnestly  speak  of  it.  The  ques 
tion  of  exactly  where  and  how  my  addresses  had 
best  figure  when  the  thing  is  reduced  to  print  you 
will  perhaps  have  your  idea  about.  For  it  must 
seem  to  you,  as  it  certainly  does  to  me,  that  their 
names  must  in  common  decency  be  all  drawn  out 
again.  .  .  .  But  you  will  pronounce  when  we  meet 
— heaven  speed  the  hour! 

Yours,  my  dear  Percy,  more  than  ever  con 
stantly, 

HENRY  JAMES. 

P.S.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  little  arrangement 
that  really  almost  imposes  itself  would  be  that  the 
Printed  Thing  should  begin  with  my  date  and  ad- 


AET.  70          TO  PERCY  LUBBOCK  311 

dress  and  my  Dear  Friends  All;  and  that  the  full 
list,  taking  even  three  complete  pages  or  whatever, 
should  then  and  there  draw  itself  out;  after  which, 
as  a  fresh  paragraph,  the  body  of  my  little  text 
should  begin.  Anything  else  affects  me  as  more 
awkward ;  and  I  seem  to  see  you  in  full  agreement 
with  me  as  to  the  absolute  necessity  that  every 
Signer,  without  exception,  shall  be  addressed. 


To  two  hundred  and  seventy  Friends. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

April  21st,  1913. 
Dear  Friends  All, 

Let  me  acknowledge  with  boundless  pleas 
ure  the  singularly  generous  and  beautiful  letter, 
signed  by  your  great  and  dazzling  array  and  rein 
forced  by  a  correspondingly  bright  material  gage, 
which  reached  me  on  my  recent  birthday,  April 
15th.  It  has  moved  me  as  brave  gifts  and  benedic 
tions  can  only  do  when  they  come  as  signal  sur 
prises.  I  seem  to  wake  up  to  an  air  of  breathing 
good  will  the  full  sweetness  of  which  I  had  never 
yet  tasted;  though  I  ask  myself  now,  as  a  second 
thought,  how  the  large  kindness  and  hospitality  in 
which  I  have  so  long  and  so  consciously  lived 
among  you  could  fail  to  act  itself  out  according 
to  its  genial  nature  and  by  some  inspired  applica 
tion.  The  perfect  grace  with  which  it  has  embraced 
the  just-past  occasion  for  its  happy  thought  affects 
me,  I  ask  you  to  believe,  with  an  emotion  too  deep 
for  stammering  words.  I  was  drawn  to  London 
long  years  ago  as  by  the  sense,  felt  from  still  earlier, 
of  all  the  interest  and  association  I  should  find 
here,  and  I  now  see  how  my  faith  was  to  sink 
deeper  foundations  than  I  could  presume  ever  to 
measure — how  my  justification  was  both  stoutly 


312       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1913 

to  grow  and  wisely  to  wait.  It  is  so  wonderful 
indeed  to  me  as  I  count  up  your  numerous  and 
various,  your  dear  and  distinguished  friendly 
names,  taking  in  all  they  recall  and  represent,  that 
I  permit  myself  to  feel  at  once  highly  successful 
and  extremely  proud.  I  had  never  in  the  least  un 
derstood  that  I  was  the  one  or  signified  that  I  was 
the  other,  but  you  have  made  a  great  difference. 
You  tell  me  together,  making  one  rich  tone  of  your 
many  voices,  almost  the  whole  story  of  my  social 
experience,  which  I  have  reached  the  right  point 
for  living  over  again,  with  all  manner  of  old  times 
and  places  renewed,  old  wonderments  and  pleas 
ures  reappeased  and  recaptured — so  that  there  is 
scarce  one  of  your  ranged  company  but  makes 
good  the  particular  connection,  quickens  the  ex 
cellent  relation,  lights  some  happy  train  and 
flushes  with  some  individual  colour.  I  pay  you 
my  very  best  respects  while  I  receive  from  your 
two  hundred  and  fifty  pair  of  hands,  and  more, 
the  admirable,  the  inestimable  bowl,  and  while  I 
engage  to  sit,  with  every  accommodation  to  the  so 
markedly  indicated  "one  of  you,"  my  illustrious 
friend  Sargent.  With  every  accommodation,  I 
say,  but  with  this  one  condition  that  you  yourselves, 
in  your  strength  and  goodness,  remain  guardians 
of  the  result  of  his  labour — even  as  I  remain  all 
faithfully  and  gratefully  yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 

P.S.     And  let  me  say  over  your  names. 

[There  follows  the  list  of  the  two  hundred  and 
seventy  subscribers  to  the  birthday  gift.] 


AET.  70     TO  MRS.  G.  W.  PROTHERO          313 


To  Mrs.  G.  W.  Prothero. 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  Prothero,  already  at  Rye,  had  suggested 
that  H.  J.  should  go  to  Lamb  House  for  Whitsuntide. 

Dictated. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 

Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

April  30th,  1913. 
Best  of  Friends  Both! 

Oh  it  is  a  dream  of  delight,  but  I  should 
have  to  climb  a  perpendicular  mountain  first. 
Your  accents  are  all  but  irresistible,  and  your 
company  divinely  desirable,  but  if  you  knew  how 
thoroughly,  and  for  such  innumerable  good  rea 
sons,  I  am  seated  here  till  I  am  able  to  leave  for 
a  real  and  workable  absence,  you  would  do  my 
poor  plea  of  impossibility  justice.  I  have  just  con 
versed  with  Joan  and  Kidd,  conversed  so  affably, 
not  to  say  lovingly,  in  the  luminous  kitchen,  which 
somehow  let  in  a  derisive  glare  upon  every  cranny 
and  crevice  of  the  infatuated  scheme.  With  this 
fierce  light  there  mingled  the  respectful  jeers  of 
the  two  ladies  themselves,  which  rose  to  a  mocking 
(though  still  deeply  deferential)  climax  for  the 
picture  of  their  polishing  off,  or  dragging  violently 
out  of  bed,  the  so  dormant  and  tucked-in  house  in 
the  ideal  couple  of  hours.  Before  their  attitude  I 
lowered  my  lance — easily  understanding  moreover 
that  their  round  of  London  gaieties  is  still  so  fresh 
and  spiced  a  cup  to  them  that  to  feel  it  removed 
from  their  lips  even  for  a  moment  is  almost  more 
than  they  can  bear.  And  then  the  coarse  and 
brutal  truth  is,  further  that  I  am  oh  so  utterly  well 
fixed  here  for  the  moment  and  so  void  of  physical 
agility  for  any  kind  of  somersault.  A  little  while 
back,  while  the  Birthday  raged,  I  did  just  look 
about  me  for  an  off -corner ;  but  now  there  has  been 


314       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1913 

a  drop  and,  the  best  calm  of  Whitsuntide  descend 
ing  on  the  scene  here,  I  feel  it  would  be  a  kind  of 
lapse  of  logic  to  hurry  off  to  where  the  social  wave, 
hurrying  ahead  of  me,  would  be  breaking  on  a  holi 
day  strand.  I  am  so  abjectly,  so  ignobly  fond  of 
not  "travelling."  To  keep  up  not  doing  it  is  in 
itself  for  me  the  most  thrilling  of  adventures.  And 
I  am  working  so  well  (unberufen!)  with  my  admir 
able  Secretary;  I  shouldn't  really  dare  to  ask  her 
to  join  our  little  caravan,  raising  it  to  the  number 
of  five,  for  a  fresh  tuning-up  again.  And  on  the 
other  hand  I  mayn't  now  abandon  what  I  am 
fatuously  pleased  to  call  my  work  for  a  single 
precious  hour.  Forgive  my  beastly  rudeness.  I 
will  write  more  in  a  day  or  two.  Do  loll  in  the 
garden  yourselves  to  your  very  fill;  do  cultivate 
George's  geniality;  do  steal  any  volume  or  set  of 
volumes  out  of  the  house  that  you  may  like;  and 
do  still  think  gently  of  your  poor  ponderous  and 
thereby,  don't  you  see  ?  so  permanent,  old  friend, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  William  James,  junior. 

Dictated. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

June  18th,  1913. 
Dearest  Bill, 

I  suppose  myself  to  be  trying  to-day  to  get 
off  a  brief  response  both  to  Harry  and  to  dear 
Peg  (whom  I  owe,  much  rather,  volumes  of  ac 
knowledgment  to;)  but  I  put  in  first  these  few 
words  to  you  and  Alice — for  the  quite  wrong 
reason  that  the  couple  of  notes  just  received  from 
you  are  those  that  have  last  come.  This  is  because 
I  feel  as  if  I  had  worried  you  a  good  bit  more  than 


AET.  70    TO  WILLIAM  JAMES,  JUNIOR     315 

helped  over  the  so  interesting  name-question  of 
the  Babe.  It  wasn't  so  much  an  attempted  solu 
tion,  at  all,  that  I  the  other  week  hastily  rushed 
into,  but  only  a  word  or  two  that  I  felt  I  absolutely 
had  to  utter,  for  my  own  relief,  by  way  of  warning 
against  our  reembarking,  any  of  us,  on  a  fresh  and 
possibly  interminable  career  of  the  tiresome  and 
graceless  "Junior."  You  see  I  myself  suffered 
from  that  tag  to  help  out  my  identity  for  forty 
years,  greatly  disliking  it  all  the  while,  and  with 
my  dislike  never  in  the  least  understood  or  my 
state  pitied;  and  I  felt  I  couldn't  be  dumb  if  there 
was  any  danger  of  your  Boy's  being  started  un 
guardedly  and  de  gcdete  de  cceur  on  a  like  long 
course ;  so  probably  and  desirably  very  very  long  in 
his  case,  given  your  youth  and  "prominence,"  in 
short  your  immortal  duration.  It  seemed  to  me  I 
ought  to  do  something  to  conjure  away  the  danger, 
though  I  couldn't  go  into  the  matter  of  exactly 
what,  at  all,  as  if  we  were  only,  and  most  delight 
fully,  talking  it  over  at  our  leisure  and  face  to  face 
— face  to  face  with  the  Babe,  I  mean;  as  I  wish  to 
goodness  we  were !  The  different  modes  of  evasion 
or  attenuation,  in  that  American  world  where 
designations  are  so  bare  and  variations,  of  the  ac 
cruing  or  "social"  kind,  so  few,  are  difficult  to  go 
into  this  distance;  and  in  short  all  that  I  meant  at 
all  by  my  attack  was  just  a  Hint!  I  feel  so  for 
poor  dear  Harry's  carrying  of  his  tag — and  as  if 
I  myself  were  directly  responsible  for  it!  How 
ever,  no  more  of  that. 

To  this  machinery  the  complications  arising  from 
the  socially  so  fierce  London  June  inevitably  (and 
in  fact  mercifully)  drive  me;  for  I  feel  the  assault, 
the  attack  on  one's  time  and  one's  strength,  even 
in  my  so  simplified  and  disqualified  state;  which  it 
is  my  one  great  effort  not  to  allow  to  be  knocked 
about.  However,  I  of  course  do  succeed  in  simpli 
fying  and  in  guarding  myself  enormously;  one 


316       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1013 

can't  but  succeed  when  the  question  is  so  vital  as 
it  has  now  become  with  me.  Which  is  really  but  a 
preface  to  telling  you  how  much  the  most  interest 
ing  thing  in  the  matter  has  been,  during  the  last 
three  weeks,  my  regular  sittings  for  my  portrait 
to  Sargent;  which  have  numbered  now  some  seven 
or  eight,  I  forget  which,  and  with  but  a  couple 
more  to  come.  So  the  thing  is,  I  make  out,  very 
nearly  finished,  and  the  head  apparently  (as  I 
much  hope)  to  have  almost  nothing  more  done  to 
it.  It  is,  I  infer,  a  very  great  success;  a  number 
of  the  competent  and  intelligent  have  seen  it,  and 
so  pronounce  it  in  the  strongest  terms.  ...  In 
short  it  seems  likely  to  be  one  of  S.'s  very  fine 
things.  One  is  almost  full-face,  with  one's  left 
arm  over  the  corner  of  one's  chair-back  and  the 
hand  brought  round  so  that  the  thumb  is  caught 
in  the  arm-hole  of  one's  waistcoat,  and  said  hand 
therefore,  with  the  fingers  a  bit  folded,  entirely 
visible  and  "treated."  Of  course  I'm  sitting  a 
little  askance  in  the  chair.  The  canvas  comes  down 
to  just  where  my  watch-chain  (such  as  it  is,  poor 
thing!)  is  hung  across  the  waistcoat:  which  latter, 
in  itself,  is  found  to  be  splendidly  (poor  thing 
though  it  also  be)  and  most  interestingly  treated. 
Sargent  can  make  such  things  so  interesting — such 
things  as  my  coat-lappet  and  shoulder  and  sleeve 
too!  But  what  is  most  interesting,  every  one  is 
agreed,  is  the  mouth — than  which  even  he  has  never 
painted  a  more  living  and,  as  I  am  told,  "expres 
sive"!  In  fact  I  can  quite  see  that  myself;  and 
really,  I  seem  to  feel,  the  thing  will  be  all  that  can 
at  the  best  (the  best  with  such  a  subject!)  have 
been  expected  of  it.  I  only  wish  you  and  Alice 
had  assisted  at  some  of  the  sittings — as  Sargent 
likes  animated,  sympathetic,  beautiful,  talkative 
friends  to  do,  in  order  to  correct  by  their  presence 
too  lugubrious  expressions.  I  take  for  granted  I 
shall  before  long  have  a  photograph  to  send  you, 


AET.  70     TO  WILLIAM  JAMES,  JUNIOR    317 

and  then  you  will  be  able  partially  to  judge  for 
yourselves. 

I  grieve  over  your  somewhat  sorry  account  of 
your  own  winter  record  of  work,  though  I  allow 
in  it  for  your  habitual  extravagance  of  blackness. 
Evidently  the  real  meaning  of  it  is  that  you  are 
getting  so  fort  all  the  while  that  you  kick  every 
rung  of  your  ladder  away  from  under  you,  by  mere 
uncontrollable  force,  as  you  mount  and  mount. 
But  the  rungs,  I  trust,  are  all  the  while  being  care 
fully  picked  up,  far  below,  and  treasured;  this 
being  Alice's,  to  say  nothing  of  anybody  else's, 
natural  care  and  duty.  Give  all  my  love  to  her  and 
to  the  beautiful  nursing  scrap!  I  want  to  say 
thirty  things  more  to  her,  but  my  saying  power  is 
too  finite  a  quantity.  I  gather  that  this  will  find 
you  happily,  and  I  trust  very  conveniently  and 
workably,  settled  at  Chocorua — where  may  the 
summer  be  blest  to  you,  and  the  thermometer  low, 
and  the  motor-runs  many!  Now  I  really  have  to 
get  at  Harry!  But  do  send  this  in  any  case  on 
to  Irving  Street,  for  the  sake  of  the  report  of  the 
picture.  I  want  them  to  have  the  good  news  of 
it  without  delay. 

Yours  both  all  affectionately, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Miss  Rhoda  Broughton. 

Dictated. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

June  25th,  1913. 
My  dear  Rhoda, 

I  reply  to  your  quite  acclaimed  letter — if 
there  can  be  an  acclamation  of  onel — by  this 
mechanic  aid  for  the  simple  reason  that,  much 
handicapped  as  to  the  free  brandish  of  arm  and 


318       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1913 

hand  nowadays,  I  find  that  the  letters  thus  helped 
out  do  get  written,  whereas  those  I  am  too  shy  or 
too  fearsome  or  too  ceremonious  to  think  anything 
but  my  poor  scratch  of  a  pen  good  enough  for 
simply  don't  come  into  existence  at  all.  It  greatly 
touches  me  at  any  rate  to  get  news  of  you  by  your 
own  undiscouraged  hand;  and  it  kind  of  cheers  me 
up  about  you  generally,  during  your  exile  from 
this  blest  town  (which  you  see  I  continue  to  bless), 
that  you  appear  to  be  in  some  degree  "on  the  go," 
and  capable  of  the  brave  exploit  of  a  country  visit. 
With  a  Brother  to  offer  you  a  garden-riot  of  roses, 
however,  I  don't  wonder,  but  the  more  rejoice,  that 
you  were  inspired  and  have  been  sustained. 

Yes,  thank  you,  dear  F.  Prothero  was  veracious 
about  the  Portrait,  as  she  is  about  everything:  it  is 
now  finished,  paracheve  (I  sat  for  the  last  time  a 
couple  of  days  ago;)  and  is  nothing  less  evidently, 
than  a  very  fine  thing  indeed,  Sargent  at  his  very 
best  and  poor  H.  J.  not  at  his  worst;  in  short 
a  living  breathing  likeness  and  a  masterpiece  of 
painting.  I  am  really  quite  ashamed  to  admire  it 
so  much  and  so  loudly — it's  so  much  as  if  I  were 
calling  attention  to  my  own  fine  points.  I  don't, 
alas,  exhibit  a  "point"  in  it,  but  am  all  large  and 
luscious  rotundity — by  which  you  may  see  how  true 
a  thing  it  is.  And  I  am  sorry  to  have  ceased  to  sit, 
in  spite  of  the  repeated  big  holes  it  made  in  my 
precious  mornings:  J.  S.  S.  being  so  genial  and  de 
lightful  a  nature  de  grand  maitre  to  have  to  do 
with,  and  his  beautiful  high  cool  studio,  opening 
upon  a  balcony  that  overhangs  a  charming  Chelsea 
green  garden,  adding  a  charm  to  everything.  He 
liked  always  a  friend  or  two  to  be  in  to  break  the 
spell  of  a  settled  gloom  in  my  countenance  by  their 
prattle ;  though  you  will  doubtless  think  this  effect 
but  little  achieved  when  I  tell  you  that,  having 
myself  found  the  thing,  as  it  grew,  more  and  more 
like  Sir  Joshua's  Dr.  Johnson,  and  said  so,  a  per- 


AET.  70     TO  MISS  RHODA  BROUGHTON  319 

ceptive  friend  reinforced  me  a  couple  of  sittings 
later  by  breaking  out  irrepressibly  with  the  same 
judgment.  .  .  . 

I  am  sticking  on  in  London,  you  see,  and  have 

?ot  distinctly  better  with  the  lapse  of  the  weeks, 
a  fact  dear  old  Town,  taken  on  the  absolutely 
simplified  and  restricted  terms  in  which  I  insist  on 
taking  it  (as  compared  with  all  the  ancient  storm 
and  stress),  is  distinctly  good  for  me,  and  the 
weather  keeping  cool — absit  omen! — I  am  not  in  a 
hurry  to  flee.  I  shall  go  to  Rye,  none  the  less, 
within  a  fortnight.  I  have  just  heard  with  distress 
that  dear  Norris  has  come  and  gone  without  mak 
ing  me  a  sign  (I  learn  by  telephone  from  his  club 
that  he  left  yesterday.)  This  has  of  course  been 
"consideration,"  but  damn  such  consideration.  My 
imagination,  soaring  over  the  interval,  hangs  fondly 
about  the  time,  next  autumn,  when  you  will  be, 
D.V.,  restored  to  Cadogan  Gardens.  I  am  im 
patient  for  my  return  hither  before  I  have  so  much 
as  really  prepared  to  go.  May  the  months  mean 
while  lie  light  on  you !  Yours,  my  dear  Rhoda,  all 
faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  Alfred  Sutro. 

H.  J.  had  been  with  Mrs.  Sutro  to  a  performance  of 
Henry  Bernstein's  play,  Le  Secret,  with  Mme.  Simone  in 
the  principal  part. 

Dictated. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

June  25th,  1913. 
Dear  Mrs.  Sutro, 

Yes,  what  a  sad  history  of  struggles  against 
fate  the  recital  of  our  whole  failure  to  achieve  yes 
terday  in  Tite  Street  does  make!  It  was  a  sorry 


320       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1913 

business  my  not  having  been  able  to  wire  you  on 
Saturday,  but  it  wasn't  till  the  Sunday  sitting 
that  the  change  to  the  Tuesday  from  the  probable 
Wednesday  (through  the  latter's  having  become 
impossible,  unexpectedly,  to  Sargent)  was  settled. 
And  yesterday  was  the  last,  the  real  last  time — 
it  terminated  even  at  12.30.  Any  touch  more  would 
be  simply  detrimental,  and  the  hand,  to  my  sense, 
is  now  all  admirably  there.  But  you  must  see  it 
some  day  when  you  are  naturally  in  town — I  can 
easily  arrange  for  that.  I  shall  be  there,  I  seem 
to  make  out,  for  a  considerable  number  of  days 
yet:  Mrs.  Wharton  comes  over  from  Paris  on  the 
30th  for  a  week,  however,  and,  I  apprehend,  will 
catch  me  up  in  her  relentless  Car  (pardon  any  ap 
parent  invidious  comparison!)  for  most  of  the  time 
she  is  here.  That  at  least  is  her  present  pro 
gramme,  but  souvent  femme  varie,  and  that  lady 
not  least.  I  am  addressing  you,  you  see,  after  this 
mechanic  fashion,  without  apology,  for  the  excel 
lent  reason  that  during  these  forenoon  hours  it  is 
my  so  much  the  most  eacpeditif  way.  .  .  . 

Almost  more  than  missing  the  seance  (to  which, 
by  the  way,  Hedworth  Williamson  came  in  just 
at  the  last  with  Mrs.  Hunter)  do  I  miss  talking 
with  you  of  Le  Secret  last  night  and  of  the  won 
drous  demoniac  little  Simone;  though  of  the  play, 
and  of  Bernstein's  extraordinary  theatric  art  them 
selves  more  than  anything  else.  I  think  our  friend 
the  Critic  said  beautifully  right  things  about  them  in 
yesterday's  Times — but  it  would  be  so  interesting 
to  have  the  matter  out  in  more  of  its  aspects  too. 
.  .  .  What  most  remains  with  one,  in  brief,  is  that 
the  play  somehow  represents  a  Case  merely,  as 
distinguished,  so  to  speak,  from  a  Situation;  the 
Case  being  always  a  thing  rather  void  of  connec 
tions  with  and  into  life  at  large,  and  the  Situation, 
dramatically  speaking,  being  largely  of  interest 
just  by  having  those.  Thereby  it  is  that  Le  Secret 


AET.  70      TO  MRS.  ALFRED  STJTRO 

leaves  one  nothing  to  apply,  by  reflection,  and  by 
way  of  illustration,  to  one's  sense  of  life  in  general, 
but  is  just  a  barren  little  instance,  little  limited 
monstrosity,  as  curious  and  vivid  as  you  like,  but 
with  no  moral  or  morality,  good  old  word,  at  all 
involved  in  it,  or  projected  out  of  it  as  an  interest. 
Hence  the  so  unfertilised  state  in  which  the  mutual 
relations  are  left!  Thereby  it's  only  theatrically, 
as  distinguished  from  dramatically,  interesting,  I 
think ;  even  if  it  be  after  that  fashion  more  so,  more 
just  theatrically  valuable,  than  anything  else  of 
Bernstein's.  For  him  it  may  count  as  almost 
superior!  And  beautifully  done,  all  round,  yes — 
save  in  the  matter  of  the  fat  blonde  whose  after  all 
pretty  recent  lapse  one  has  to  take  so  comfortably 
and  sympathetically  for  granted.  However,  if  she 
had  been  more  sylph-like  and  more  pleasing  she 
wouldn't  seem  to  have  been  paying  for  her  past  at 
the  rate  demanded;  and  if  she  had  been  any  way 
different,  in  short,  would  have  appeared  to  know, 
and  to  have  previously  known,  too  much  what  she 
was  about  to  be  pathetic  enough,  victim  enough. 
What  a  pull  the  French  do  get  for  their  drama- 
form,  their  straight  swift  course,  by  being  able  to 
postulate  such  ladies,  for  interest,  sympathy,  edi 
fication  even,  with  such  a  fine  absence  of  what  we 
call  explaining!  But  this  is  all  now:.  I  must  post 
it  on  the  jump.  Do  try  to  put  in  a  few  hours  in 
town  at  some  time  or  other  before  I  go;  and  be 
lieve  me  yours  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


322       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1913 

To  Hugh  Walpole. 

Lamb  House,  Rye, 

Aug:  21:  13. 

.  .  .  Beautiful  must  be  your  Cornish  land  and 
your  Cornish  sea,  idyllic  your  Cornish  setting,  like 
this  flattering,  this  wonderful  summer,  and  ours 
here  doubtless  may  claim  but  a  modest  place  beside 
it  all.  Yet  as  you  have  with  you  your  Mother  and 
Sister,  which  I  am  delighted  to  hear  and  whom  I 
gratefully  bless,  so  I  can  match  them  with  my 
nephew  and  niece  (the  former  with  me  alas  indeed 
but  for  these  10  or  12  days,)  who  are  an  extreme 
benediction  to  me.  My  niece,  a  charming  and  in 
teresting  young  person  and  most  conversable, 
stays,  I  hope,  through  the  greater  part  of  Septem 
ber,  and  I  even  curse  that  necessary  limit — when 
she  returns  to  America.  ...  I  like  exceedingly  to 
hear  that  your  work  has  got  so  bravely  on,  and 
envy  you  that  sovereign  consciousness.  When  it's 
finished — well,  when  it's  finished  let  some  of  those 
sweet  young  people,  the  bons  amis  (yours),  come 
to  me  for  the  small  change  of  remark  that  I 
gathered  from  you  the  other  day  (you  were  ador 
able  about  it)  they  have  more  than  once  chinked 
in  your  ear  as  from  my  poor  old  pocket,  and  they 
wiU  see,  you  will,  in  what  coin  I  shall  have  paid 
them.  I  too  am  working  with  a  certain  shrunken 
regularity — when  not  made  to  lapse  and  stumble 
by  circumstances  (damnably  physical)  beyond  my 
control.  These  circumstances  tend  to  come,  on  the 
whole  (thanks  to  a  great  power  of  patience  in  my 
ancient  organism,)  rather  more  within  my  manage 
ment  than  for  a  good  while  back;  but  to  live  with 
a  bad  and  chronic  anginal  demon  preying  on  one's 
vitals  takes  a  great  deal  of  doing.  However,  I 
didn't  mean  to  write  you  of  that  side  of  the  picture 
(save  that  it's  a  large  part  of  that  same,)  and  only 


AET.  70  TO  HUGH  WALPOLE  323 

glance  that  way  to  make  sure  of  your  tenderness 
even  when  I  may  seem  to  you  backward  and  blank. 
It  isn't  to  exploit  your  compassion — it's  only  to  be 
able  to  feel  that  I  am  not  without  your  fond  un 
derstanding  :  so  far  as  your  blooming  youth  ( there's 
the  crack  in  the  fiddle-case!)  can  fondly  under 
stand  my  so  otherwise-conditioned  age.  .  .  .  My 
desire  is  to  stay  on  here  as  late  into  the  autumn  as 
may  consort  with  my  condition — I  dream  of  stick 
ing  on  through  November  even  if  possible :  Cheyne 
Walk  and  the  black-barged  yellow  river  will  be 
the  more  agreeable  to  me  when  I  get  back  to  them. 
I  make  out  that  you  will  then  be  in  London  again 
— I  mean  by  November,  though  such  a  black  gulf 
of  time  intervenes;  and  then  of  course  I  may  look 
to  you  to  come  down  to  me  for  a  couple  of  days. 
It  will  be  the  lowest  kind  of  "jinks" — so  halting 
is  my  pace;  yet  we  shall  somehow  make  it  serve. 
Don't  say  to  me,  by  the  way,  a  propos  of  jinks — 
the  "high"  kind  that  you  speak  of  having  so  wal 
lowed  in  previous  to  leaving  town — that  I  ever 
challenge  you  as  to  why  you  wallow,  or  splash  or 
plunge,  or  dizzily  and  sublimely  soar  (into  the 
jinks  element,)  or  whatever  you  may  call  it:  as 
if  I  ever  remarked  on  anything  but  the  absolute 
inevitability  of  it  for  you  at  your  age  and  with 
your  natural  curiosities,  as  it  were,  and  passions. 
It's  good  healthy  exercise,  when  it  comes  but  in 
bouts  and  brief  convulsions,  and  it's  always  a  kind 
of  thing  that  it's  good,  and  considerably  final,  to 
have  done.  We  must  know,  as  much  as  possible, 
in  our  beautiful  art,  yours  and  mine,  what  we  are 
talking  about — and  the  only  way  to  know  is  to 
have  lived  and  loved  and  cursed  and  floundered  and 
enjoyed  and  suffered.  I  think  I  don't  regret  a 
single  "excess"  of  my  responsive  youth — I  only 
regret,  in  my  chilled  age,  certain  occasions  and 
possibilities  I  didn't  embrace.  Bad  doctrine  to  im 
part  to  a  young  idiot  or  duffer,  but  in  place  for 


324       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1913 

a  young  friend  (pressed  to  my  heart)  with  a  fund 
of  nobler  passion,  the  preserving,  the  defying,  the 
dedicating,  and  which  always  has  the  last  word; 
the  young  friend  who  can  dip  and  shake  off  and 
go  his  straight  way  again  when  it's  time.  But 
we'll  talk  of  all  this— it's  absolutely  late.  Who 
is  D.  H.  Lawrence,  who,  you  think,  would  interest 
me?  Send  him  and  his  book  along — by  which  I 
simply  mean  Inoculate  me,  at  your  convenience 
(don't  address  me  the  volume),  so  far  as  I  can  be 
inoculated.  I  always  try  to  let  anything  of  the 
kind  "take."  Last  year,  you  remember,  a  couple 
of  improbabilities  (as  to  "taking")  did  worm  a 
little  into  the  fortress.  ( Gilbert  Cannan  was  one. ) 
I  have  been  reading  over  Tolstoi's  interminable 
Peace  and  War,  and  am  struck  with  the  fact  that 
I  now  protest  as  much  as  I  admire.  He  doesn't 
do  to  read  over,  and  that  exactly  is  the  answer  to 
those  who  idiotically  proclaim  the  impunity  of 
such  formless  shape,  such  flopping  looseness  and 
such  a  denial  of  composition,  selection  and  style. 
He  has  a  mighty  fund  of  life,  but  the  waste,  and 
the  ugliness  and  vice  of  waste,  the  vice  of  a  not 
finer  doing,  are  sickening.  For  me  he  makes 
"composition"  throne,  by  contrast,  in  effulgent 
lustre! 

Ever  your  fondest  of  the  fond, 

H.  J. 


To  Mrs.  Archibald  Grove. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

August  22nd,  1913. 
My  dear  Kate  Grove, 

Please  don't  measure  by  my  not-to-be- 
avoided  delay  (of  three  or  four — or  five,  days)  to 
acknowledge  it,  the  degree  of  pleasure  and  blest 
relief  your  most  kind  letter  represents  for  me.  I 
have  fallen  these  last  years  on  evil  days,  physically 


AET.  70    TO  MRS.  ARCHIBALD  GROVE     325 

speaking,  and  have  to  do  things  only  when  and 
as  I  rather  difficultly  can,  and  not  after  a  prompter 
fashion.  But  you  give  me  a  blest  occasion,  and  I 
heartily  thank  you  for  it.  Ever  since  that  so  pleas 
ant  meeting  of  ours  in  Piccadilly  toward  the  end 
Of  1909 — nearly  four  long  years  ago — have  I  been 
haunted  with  the  dreadful  sense  of  a  debt  to  your 
benevolence  that  has  remained  woefully  undis 
charged.  I  came  back  to  this  place  that  same  day 
— of  our  happy  encounter — to  be  taken  on  the 
morrow  with  the  preliminaries  of  a  wretched  illness 
that  dismally  developed,  that  lasted  actively,  in 
short,  for  two  long  years,  and  that  has  left  me  for 
the  rest  of  my  ancient  days  much  compromised 
and  disqualified  (though  I  should  be  better  of 
some  of  it  all  now — I  mean  better er\ — if  I  weren't 
so  much  older — or  olderer!)  However,  the  point 
is  that  just  as  I  had  begun,  on  that  now  far-off 
occasion,  to  take  the  measure  of  what  was  darkly 
before  me — that  is  had  been  clapped  into  bed  by 
my  Doctor  here  and  a  nurse  clapped  down  beside 
me  (the  first  of  a  perfect  procession) — I  heard 
from  you  in  very  kind  terms,  asking  me  to  come 
and  see  you  and  Archibald  in  the  country — prob 
ably  at  the  Pollards  inscribed  upon  your  present 
letter.  Well,  I  couldn't  so  much  as  make  you  a 
sign — my  correspondence  had  so  utterly  gone  to 
pieces  on  the  spot.  Little  by  little  in  the  aftertime 
I  picked  up  some  of  those  pieces — others  are  for 
ever  scattered  to  the  winds — and  this  particular 
piece  you  see  I  am  picking  up  now,  with  a  slight 
painful  contortion,  only  after  this  lapse  of  the 
years!  It  is  too  strange  and  too  graceless — or 
would  be  so  if  you  hadn't  just  put  into  it  a  grace 
for  which,  as  I  say,  I  can  scarce  sufficiently  thank 
you.  The  worst  of  such  disasters  and  derelictions 
is  that  they  take  such  terrific  retrospective  ex 
planations  and  that  one's  courage  collapses  at  all 
there  is  to  tell,  and  so  the  wretched  appearance 


326       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1913 

continues.  However,  I  repeat,  you  have  trans 
formed  it  by  your  generous  condonation — you  have 
helped  me  to  tell  you  a  small  scrap  of  my  story. 
It  was  on  your  part  a  most  beautiful  inspiration, 
and  I  bless  my  ponderous  volume  for  its  communi 
cation  to  you  of  the  impulse.  Quite  apart  from 
this  balm  to  my  stricken  conscience,  I  do  rejoice 
that  the  fatuous  book  has  beguiled  and  interested 
you.  I  had  pleasure  in  writing  it,  but  I  delight  in 
the  liberality  of  your  appreciation.  But  I  wish  you 
had  told  me  too  something  more  of  yourself  and  of 
Grove,  more  I  mean  than  that  you  are  thus  ideally 
amiable — which  I  already  knew.  Your  "we"  has 
a  comprehensive  looseness,  and  I  should  have  wel 
comed  more  dots  on  the  i's.  Almost  your  only 
detail  is  that  you  were  here  at  some  comparatively 
recent  hour  (I  infer,)  and  that  you  only  gave  my 
little  house  a  beautiful  dumb  glare  and  went  your 
way  again.  Why  do  you  do  such  things? — they 
give  you  almost  an  air  of  exulting  in  them  after 
wards  !  If  I  only  had  a  magic  "car"  of  my  own  I 
would  jump  into  it  tomorrow  and  come  over  to  see 
you  at  Crowborough — I  was  there  in  that  fashion, 
by  an  afternoon  lift  from  a  friend,  exactly  a  year 
ago.  My  brother  William's  only  daughter,  a  de 
lightful  young  woman,  and  her  eldest  brother,  a 
most  able  and  eminent  young  man,  are  with  me  at 
this  time,  though  he  too  briefly,  and  demand  of  me, 
or  receive  from  me,  all  the  attention  my  reduced 
energies  are  capable  of  in  a  social  (so  to  speak) 
and  adventurous  way,  but  if  anything  is  possible 
later  on  I  will  do  my  best  toward  it.  I  wish  you 
were  both  conceivable  at  luncheon  here.  Do  ask 
yourselves  candidly  if  you  aren't — and  make  me 
the  affirmative  sign.  I  should  so  like  to  see  you. 
I  recall  myself  affectionately  to  Archibald — I  think 
of  the  ancient  wonders,  images,  scenes — all  fan- 
tasmagoric  now.  Yours  and  his  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


A»T.  70  TO  WILLIAM  ROUGHEAD,  W.S.  327 


To  William  Roughead,  W.  S. 

Mr.  Roughead,  at  this  time  a  stranger,  had  sent  H.  J. 
some  literature  of  a  kind  in  which  he  always  took  a  keen 
interest — the  literature  of  crime.  The  following  refers 
to  the  gift  of  a  publication  of  the  Juridical  Society  of 
Edinburgh,  dealing  with  trials  of  witches  in  the  time  of 
James  I.  Other  volumes  of  the  same  nature  followed, 
and  the  correspondence  led  to  a  valued  friendship '  with 
the  giver. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

August  24th,  1913. 

Dear  Mr.  Roughead, 

I  succumbed  to  your  Witchery,  that  is  I 
read  your  brave  pages,  the  very  day  they  swam 
into  my  ken — what  a  pleasure,  by  the  way,  to  hang 
over  a  periodical  page  so  materially  handsome  as 
that  of  which  the  Scots  members  of  your  great  pro 
fession  "dispose"! — those  at  least  who  are  worthy. 
But  face  to  face  with  my  correspondence,  and  with 
my  age  (a  "certain,"  a  very  certain,  age,)  and 
some  of  its  drawbacks,  I  am  aware  of  the  shrunken 
nature  of  my  poor  old  shrunken  energies  of  re 
sponse  in  general  (once  fairly  considerable;)  and 
hence  in  short  this  little  delay.  Of  a  horrible  in 
terest  and  a  most  ingenious  vividness  of  presenta 
tion  is  all  that  hideous  business  in  your  hands — with 
the  unspeakable  King's  figure  looming  through  the 
caldron-smoke  he  kicks  up  to  more  abominable 
effect  than  the  worst  witch  images  into  which  he 
so  fondly  seeks  to  convert  other  people.  He  was 
truly  a  precious  case  and  quite  the  sort  of  one  that 
makes  us  most  ask  how  the  time  and  place  con 
cerned  with  him  could  at  all  stagger  under  him  or 
successfully  stomach  him.  But  the  whole,  the  col 
lective,  state  of  mind  and  tissue  of  horrors  some 
how  fall  outside  of  our  measure  and  sense  and 


328       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1913 

exceed  our  comprehension.  The  amenability  of 
the  victims,  the  wonder  of  what  their  types  and 
characters  would  at  all  "rhyme  with"  among  our 
selves  today,  takes  more  setting  forth  than  it  can 
easily  get — even  as  you  figure  it  or  touch  on  it; 
and  there  are  too  many  things  (in  the  amenability) 
as  to  which  one  vainly  asks  one's  self  what  they  can 
too  miserably  have  meant.  That  is  the  flaw  in 
respect  to  interest — that  the  "psychology"  of  the 
matter  fails  for  want  of  more  intimate  light  in  the 
given,  in  any  instance.  It  doesn't  seem  enough  to 
say  that  the  wretched  people  were  amenable  just 
to  torture,  or  their  torturers  just  to  a  hideous  sin 
cerity  of  fear;  for  the  selectability  of  the  former 
must  have  rested  on  some  aspects  or  qualities  that 
elude  us,  and  the  question  of  what  could  pass  for 
the  latter  as  valid  appearances,  as  verifications  of 
the  imputed  thing,  is  too  abysmal.  And  the  psy 
chology  of  the  loathsome  James  (oh  the  Fortunes 
of  Nigel,  which  Andrew  Lang  admired!)  is  of  no 
use  in  mere  glimpses  of  his  "cruelty,"  which  ex 
plains  nothing,  or  unless  we  get  it  all  and  really 
enter  the  horrid  sphere.  However,  I  don't  want 
to  do  that  in  truth,  for  the  wretched  aspects  of  the 
creature  do  a  disservice  somehow  to  the  so  interest 
ing  and  on  the  whole  so  sympathetic  appearance 
of  his  wondrous  mother.  That  she  should  have 
had  but  one  issue  of  her  body  and  that  he  should 
have  had  to  be  that  particular  mixture  of  all  the 
contemptibilities,  "bar  none,"  is  too  odious  to 
swallow.  Of  course  he  had  a  horrid  papa — but  he 
has  always  been  retroactively  compromising,  and 
my  poor  point  is  simply  that  he  is  the  more  so  the 
more  one  looks  at  him  (as  your  rich  page  makes 
one  do).  But  I  insist  too  much,  and  all  I  really 
wanted  to  say  is:  "Do,  very  generously,  send  me 
the  sequel  to  your  present  study — my  appetite  has 
opened  to  it  too;  but  then  go  back  to  the  dear  old 
human  and  sociable  murders  and  adulteries  and 


AET.  TO  TO  WILLIAM  ROUGHEAD,  W.S.   329 

forgeries  in  which  we  are  so  agreeably  at  home. 
And  don't  tell  me,  for  charity's  sake,  that  your 
supply  runs  short!"  I  am  greatly  obliged  to  you 
for  that  good  information  as  to  the  accessibility  of 
those  modern  cases — of  which  I  am  on  the  point 
of  availing  myself.  It's  a  kind  of  relief  to  me  to 
gather  that  the  sinister  Arran— I  may  take  such 
visions  too  hard,  but  it  has  been  made  sinister  to 
me— hasn't  quite  answered  for  you.  Here  we  have 
been  having  a  wondrous  benignant  August — may 
you  therefore  have  had  some  benignity.  And  may 
you  not  feel  the  least  bit  pressingly  the  pull  of 
this  letter. 

Yours  most  truly, 

HENRY  JAMES. 

P.  S.     Only  send  me  the  next  Juridical — and 
then  a  wee  word. 


To  Mrs.  William  James. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
August  28th,  1913. 

Dearest  Alice, 

Your  Irving  St.  letter  of  the  16th  has  bless 
edly  come,  and  Harry  alas,  not  so  auspiciously, 
leaves  me  tomorrow  on  his  way  to  sail  from  South 
ampton  on  Saturday.  But  though  it's  very,  very 
late  in  the  evening  (I  won't  tell  you  how  late,)  I 
want  this  hurried  word  to  go  along  with  him,  to 
express  both  my  joy  of  hearing  from  you  and  my 
joy  of  Mm,  little  as  that  is  expressible.  For  how 
can  I  tell  you  what  it  is  for  me  in  all  this  latter  time 
that  William's  children,  and  your  children,  should 
be  such  an  interest,  such  a  support  and  such  a 
benediction?  Peggy  and  Harry,  between  them, 
will  have  crowned  this  summer  with  ease  and  com- 


330       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1913 

fort  to  me,  and  I  know  how  it  will  be  something 
of  the  same  to  you  that  they  have  done  so.  ... 
It  makes  me  think  all  the  while,  as  it  must  forever 
(you  will  feel,  I  well  know)  make  you,  of  what 
William's  joy  of  him  would  have  been — something 
so  bitter  rises  at  every  turn  from  everything  that 
is  good  for  us  and  that  lie  is  out  of.  I  have  shared 
nothing  happy  with  the  children  these  weeks  (and 
there  have  been,  thank  heaven,  many  such  things) 
without  finding  that  particular  shadow  always  of 
a  sudden  leap  out  of  its  lair.  But  why  do  I  speak 
to  you  of  this  as  if  I  needed  to  and  it  weren't  with 
you  all  the  while  far  more  than  it  can  be  even  with 
me?  The  only  thing  is  that  to  feel  it  and  say  it, 
unspeakable  though  one's  tenderness  be,  is  a  sort 
of  dim  propitiation  of  his  ghost  that  hovers  yearn 
ingly  for  us — doesn't  it? — at  once  so  partakingly 
near  and  yet  so  far  off  in  darkness!  However,  I 
throw  myself  into  the  imagination  that  he  may 
blessedly  pity  us  far  more  than  we  can  ever  pity 
him;  and  the  great  thing  is  that  even  our  sense  of 
him  as  sacrificed  only  keeps  him  the  more  intensely 
with  us.  ...  Good-night,  dearest  Alice. 

H.  J. 


To  Howard  Sturgis. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
Sept:  2nd,  1913. 

My  dearest  of  all  Howards, 

I  long  so  for  news  of  you  that  nothing  but 
this  act  of  aggression  will  serve,  and  that  even 
though  I  know  (none  better!)  what  a  heavy,  not 
to  say  intolerable  overburdening  of  illness  is  the 
request  that  those  even  too  afflicted  to  feed  them 
selves  shall  feed  the  post  with  vivid  accounts  of 
themselves.  But  though  I  don't  in  the  least  imagine 


AET.  70         TO  HOWARD  STURGIS  331 

that  you  are  not  feeding  yourself  (I  hope  very 
regularly  and  daintily,)  this  is  all  the  same  an  ir 
resistible  surrender  to  sentiments  of  which  you  are 
the  loved  object — downright  crude  affection,  fond 
interest,  uncontrollable  yearning.  Look  you,  it 
isn't  a  request  for  anything,  even  though  I  languish 
in  the  vague — it's  just  a  renewed  "declaration" — 
of  dispositions  long,  I  trust  familiar  to  you  and 
which  my  uncertainty  itself  makes  me  want,  for  my 
relief,  to  reiterate.  A  vagueish  (which  looks  like 
agueish,  but  let  the  connection  particularly  forbid!) 
echo  of  you  came  to  me  shortly  since  from  Rhoda 
Broughton — more  or  less  to  the  effect  that  she 
believed  you  to  be  still  in  Scotland  and  still  nurse- 
ridden  (which  is  my  rude  way  of  putting  it;)  and 
this  she  took  for  not  altogether  significant  of  your 
complete  recovery  of  ease.  However,  she  is  on 
occasion  a  rich  dark  pessimist — which  is  always  the 
more  picturesque  complexion;  and  she  may  that 
day  but  have  added  a  more  artful  touch  to  her 
cheek.  I  decline  to  believe  that  you  are  not  rising 
by  gentle  stages  to  a  fine  equilibrium  unless  some 
monstrous  evidence  crowds  upon  me.  I  have  my 
self  little  by  little  left  such  a  weight  of  misery 
behind  me — really  quite  shaken  off,  though  ever 
so  slowly,  the  worst  of  it,  that  slowness  is  to  me 
no  unfavouring  argument  at  all,  nor  is  the  fact  of 
fluctuations  a  thing  to  dismay.  One  goes  unutter 
ably  roundabout,  but  still  one  goes — and  so  it  is  I 
have  come.  To  where  I  am,  I  mean;  which  is 
doubtless  where  I  shall  more  or  less  stay.  I  can 
do  with  it,  for  want  of  anything  grander — and  it's 
comparative  peace  and  ease.  It  isn't  what  I  wish 
you — for  I  wish  and  invoke  upon  you  the  superla 
tive  of  these  benedictions,  and  indeed  it  would  give 
me  a  good  shove  on  to  the  positive  myself  to  know 
that  your  comparative  creeps  quietly  forward. 
Don't  resent  creeping — there's  an  inward  joy  in 
it  at  its  best  that  leaping  and  bounding  don't  know. 


332       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1913 

And  I'm  sure  you  are  having  it — even  if  you  still 
only  creep — at  its  best.  I  live  snail-like  here,  and 
it's  from  my  modest  brown  shell  that  I  reach,  oh 
dearest  Howard,  ever  so  tenderly  forth  to  you.  I 
am  having — absit  omen! — a  very  decent  little  sum 
mer.  My  quite  admirable  niece  Peggy  has  been 
with  me  for  some  weeks ;  she  is  to  be  so  some  three 
more,  and  her  presence  is  most  soothing  and  sup 
porting.  (I  can't  stand  stiff  solitude  in  the  large 
black  doses  I  once  could.)  .  .  . 

But  good-night  and  take  all  my  blessing — all 
but  a  scrap  for  William.  Yours,  dearest  Howard, 
so  very  fondly, 

H.  J. 


To  Mrs.  G.  W.  Prothero. 

The  "young  man  from  Texas"  was  Mr.  Stark  Young, 
who  had  appealed  to  Mrs.  Prothero  for  guidance  in  the 
study  of  H.  J.'s  books.  H.  J.  was  amused  by  the  request, 
of  which  Mrs.  Prothero  told  him,  and  immediately  wrote 
the  following. 

Rye. 

Sept.  14th,  1913. 

This,  please,  for  the  delightful  young  man  from 
Texas,  who  shews  such  excellent  dispositions.  I 
only  want  to  meet  him  half  way,  and  I  hope  very 
much  he  won't  think  I  don't  when  I  tell  him  that 
the  following  indications  as  to  five  of  my  produc 
tions  (splendid  number — I  glory  in  the  tribute  of 
his  appetite!)  are  all  on  the  basis  of  the  Scribner's 
(or  Macmillan's)  collective  and  revised  and  pre-_ 
faced  edition  of  my  things,  and  that  if  he  is 
minded  somehow  to  obtain  access  to  that  form  of 
them,  ignoring  any  others,  he  forfeits  half,  or  much 
more  than  half,  my  confidence.  So  I  thus  amicably 


AET.  70    TO  MRS.  G.  W.  PROTHERO          333 

beseech  him — !    I  suggest  to  give  him  as  alterna 
tives  these  two  slightly  different  lists: 

1.  Roderick  Hudson. 

2.  The  Portrait  of  a  Lady. 

3.  The  Princess  Casamassima. 

4.  The  Wings  of  the  Dove. 

5.  The  Golden  Bowl. 


1.  The  American. 

2.  The  Tragic  Muse. 

3.  The  Wings  of  the  Dove. 

4.  The  Ambassadors. 

5.  The  Golden  Bowl. 

The  second  list  is,  as  it  were,  the  more  "ad 
vanced."  And  when  it  comes  to  the  shorter  Tales 
the  question  is  more  difficult  (for  characteristic 
selection)  and  demands  separate  treatment.  Come 
to  me  about  that,  dear  young  man  from  Texas, 
later  on — you  shall  have  your  little  tarts  when 
you  have  eaten  your  beef  and  potatoes.  Mean 
while  receive  this  from  your  admirable  friend  Mrs. 
Prothero. 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  H.  G.  Wells. 

The  following  refers  to  Mr.  Wells's  novel,  The  Passion 
ate  Friends. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

September  21st,  1913. 
My  dear  Wells, 

I  won't  take  time  to  tell  you  how  touched 
I  freshly  am  by  the  constancy  with  which  you  send 
me  these  wonderful  books  of  yours — I  am  too  im 
patient  to  let  you  know  how  wonderful  I  find  the 
last.  I  bare  my  head  before  the  immense  ability 


334       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1013 

of  it — before  the  high  intensity  with  which  your 
talent  keeps  itself  interesting  and  which  has  made 
me  absorb  the  so  full-bodied  thing  in  deep  and  pro 
longed  gustatory  draughts.  I  am  of  my  nature 
and  by  the  effect  of  my  own  "preoccupations" 
a  critical,  a  non-naif,  a  questioning,  worrying 
reader  —  and  more  than  ever  so  at  this  end  of 
time,  when  I  jib  altogether  and  utterly  at  the  "fic 
tion  of  the  day"  and  find  no  company  but  yours 
and  that,  in  a  degree,  of  one  or  two  others  possible. 
To  read  a  novel  at  all  I  perform  afresh,  to  my 
sense,  the  act  of  writing  it,  that  is  of  re-handling 
the  subject  according  to  my  own  lights  and  over- 
scoring  the  author's  form  and  pressure  with  my 
own  vision  and  understanding  of  the  way — this,  of 
course  I  mean,  when  I  see  a  subject  in  what  he 
has  done  and  feel  its  appeal  to  me  as  one:  which 
I  fear  I  very  often  don't.  This  produces  reflec 
tions  and  reserves  —  it's  the  very  measure  of  my 
attention  and  my  interest;  but  there's  nobody  who 
makes  these  particular  reactions  less  matter  for  me 
than  you  do,  as  they  occur — who  makes  the  whole 
apple-cart  so  run  away  that  I  don't  care  if  I  don't 
upset  it  and  only  want  to  stand  out  of  its  path  and 
see  it  go.  This  is  because  you  have  so  positive  a 
process  and  method  of  your  own  (rare  and  almost 
sole  performer  to  this  tune  roundabout  us — in  fact 
absolutely  sole  by  the  force  of  your  exhibition) 
that  there's  an  anxious  joy  in  seeing  what  it  does 
for  you  and  with  you.  I  find  you  perverse  and  I 
find  you,  on  a  whole  side,  unconscious,  as  I  can 
only  call  it,  but  my  point  is  that  with  this  heart 
breaking  leak  even  sometimes  so  nearly  playing  the 
devil  with  the  boat  your  talent  remains  so  savoury 
and  what  you  do  so  substantial.  I  adore  a  rounded 
objectivity,  a  completely  and  patiently  achieved 
one,  and  what  I  mean  by  your  perversity  and  your 
leak  is  that  your  attachment  to  the  autobiographic 
form  for  the  kind  of  thing  undertaken,  the  whole 


AET.  70  TO  H.  G.  WELLS  335 

expression  of  actuality,  "up  to  date,"  affects  me  as 
sacrificing  what  I  hold  most  dear,  a  precious  effect 
of  perspective,  indispensable,  by  my  fond  measure, 
to  beauty  and  authenticity.  Where  there  needn't 
so  much  be  question  of  that,  as  in  your  hero's  rich 
and  roaring  impressionism,  his  expression  of  his 
own  experience,  intensity  and  avidity  as  a  whole, 
you  are  magnificent,  there  your  ability  prodigiously 
triumphs  and  I  grovel  before  you.  This  is  the  way 
to  take  your  book,  I  think — with  Stratton's  own 
picture  (I  mean  of  himself  and  his  immediate 
world  felt  and  seen  with  such  exasperated  and  oh 
such  simplified  impatiences)  as  its  subject  exclu 
sively.  So  taken  it's  admirably  sustained,  and  the 
life  and  force  and  wit  and  humour,  the  imagina 
tion  and  arrogance  and  genius  with  which  you 
keep  it  up,  are  tremendous  and  all  your  own.  I 
think  this  projection  of  Stratton's  rage  of  reflec 
tions  and  observations  and  world-visions  is  in  its 
vividness  and  humour  and  general  bigness  of  at 
tack,  a  most  masterly  thing  to  have  done.  His 
South  Africa  etc.  I  think  really  sublime,  and  I 
can  do  beautifully  with  him  and  his  'ideas'  alto 
gether — he  is,  and  they  are,  an  immense  success. 
Where  I  find  myself  doubting  is  where  I  gather 
that  you  yourself  see  your  subject  more  particu 
larly — and  where  I  rather  feel  it  escape  me.  That 
is,  to  put  it  simply — for  I  didn't  mean  to  draw 
this  out  so  much,  and  it's  2  o'clock  a.m. ! — the  hero's 
prodigiously  clever,  foreshortened,  impressionising 
report  of  the  heroine  and  the  relation  (which  last 
is,  I  take  it,  for  you,  the  subject)  doesn't  affect  me 
as  the  real  vessel  of  truth  about  them ;  in  short,  with 
all  the  beauty  you  have  put  into  it — and  much  of 
it,  especially  at  the  last,  is  admirably  beautiful — I 
don't  care  a  fig  for  the  hero's  report  as  an  account 
of  the  matter.  You  didn't  mean  a  sentimental 
'love  story'  I  take  it — you  meant  ever  so  much  more 
— and  your  way  strikes  me  as  not  the  way  to  give 


336       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1013 

the  truth  about  the  woman  of  our  hour.  I  don't 
think  you  get  her,  or  at  any  rate  give  her,  and  all 
through  one  hears  your  remarkable — your  wonder 
ful! — reporting  manner  and  voice  (up  to  last  week, 
up  to  last  night,)  and  not,  by  my  persuasion,  hers. 
In  those  letters  she  writes  at  the  last  it's  for  me  all 
Stratton,  all  masculinity  and  intellectual  superior 
ity  (of  the  most  real,)  all  a  more  dazzling  journal 
istic  talent  than  I  observe  any  woman  anywhere 
(with  all  respect  to  the  cleverness  they  exhibit) 
putting  on  record.  It  isn't  in  these  terms  of  im 
mediate — that  is  of  her  pretended  own  immediate 
irony  and  own  comprehensive  consciousness,  that  I 
see  the  woman  made  real  at  all;  and  by  so  much  it 
is  that  I  should  be  moved  to  take,  as  I  say,  such 
liberties  of  reconstruction.  But  I  don't  in  the  least 
want  to  take  them,  as  I  still  more  emphatically 
say — for  what  you  have  done  has  held  me  delicious- 
ly  intent  and  made  me  feel  anew  with  thanks  to  the 
great  Author  of  all  things  what  an  invaluable  form 
and  inestimable  art  it  is!  Go  on,  go  on  and  do  it 
as  you  like,  so  long  as  you  keep  doing  it;  your 
faculty  is  of  the  highest  price,  your  temper  and 
your  hand  form  one  of  the  choicest  treasures  of  the 
time;  my  effusive  remarks  are  but  the  sign  of  my 
helpless  subjection  and  impotent  envy,  and  I  am 
yours,  my  dear  Wells,  all  gratefully  and  faith 
fully, 

HENEY  JAMES. 


AET.  70    TO  LOGAN  PEARSALL  SMITH     337 


To  Logan  Pearsall  Smith. 

Mr.  Pearsall  Smith  had  sent  H.  J.  the  Poems  of  Dlgby 
Mackworth'Dolben,  the  young  writer  whose  rare  promise 
was  cut  short  by  his  accidental  death  in  1867.  His 
poems  were  edited  in  1913,  with  a  biographical  introduc 
tion,  by  Mr.  Robert  Bridges,  a  friend  and  contemporary 
of  Dolben  at  Eton. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

October  27th,  1913. 
My  dear  Logan, 

I  thank  you  very  kindly  for  the  other  boun 
ties  which  have  followed  the  bounty  of  your  visit — 
beginning  with  your  vivid  and  charming  letter,  a 
chronicle  of  such  happy  homeward  adventure.     I 
greatly  enjoyed  our  so  long  delayed  opportunity 
for  free  discourse,  and  hold  that  any  less  freedom 
would  have  done  it  no  due  honour  at  all.    I  like  to 
think  on  the.  contrary  that  we  have  planted  the  very 
standard  of  freedom,  very  firmly,  in  my  little  oak 
parlour,  and  that  it  will  hang  with  but  comparative 
heaviness  till  you  come  back  at  some  favouring 
hour  and  help  me  to  give  its  folds  again  to  the 
air.     The  munificence  of  your  two  little  books  I 
greatly    appreciate,    and    have    promptly    appro 
priated  the  very  interesting  contents  of  Bridges' 
volume.      (The  small  accompanying  guide  gives 
me  more  or  less  the  key  to  his  proper  possessive.) 
The  disclosure  and  picture  of  the  wondrous  young 
Dolben  have  made  the  liveliest  impression  on  me, 
and  I  find  his  personal  report  of  him  very  beauti 
fully  and  tenderly,  in  fact  just  perfectly,  done. 
Immensely  must  one  envy  him  the  possession  of 
such  a  memory  —  recovered  and  re-stated,  sharply 
rescued  from  the  tooth  of  time,  after  so  many  piled- 
up  years.    Extraordinarily  interesting  I  think  the 
young  genius  himself,  by  virtue  of  his  rare  special 
gift,  and  even  though  the  particular  preoccupa- 


338       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1913 

tions  out  of  which  it  flowers,  their  whole  note  and 
aspect,  have  in  them  for  me  something  positively 
antipathetic.  Uncannily,  I  mean,  does  the  so  pre 
cocious  and  direct  avidity  for  all  the  paraphernalia 
of  a  complicated  ecclesiasticism  affect  me — as  if 
he  couldn't  possibly  have  come  to  it,  or,  as  we  say, 
gone  for  it,  by  experience,  at  that  age — so  that 
there  is  in  it  a  kind  of  implication  of  the  insincere 
and  the  merely  imitational,  the  cheaply  "roman 
tic."  However,  he  was  clearly  born  with  that 
spoon  in  his  mouth,  even  if  he  might  have  spewed 
it  out  afterwards  —  as  one  wonders  immensely 
whether  he  wouldn't.  In  fact  that's  the  interest 
of  him — that  it's  the  privilege  of  such  a  rare  young 
case  to  make  one  infinitely  wonder  how  it  might  or 
mightn't  have  been  for  him — and  Bridges  seems 
to  me  right  in  claiming  that  no  equally  young  case 
has  ever  given  us  ground  for  so  much  wonder  (in 
the  personal  and  aesthetic  connection. )  Would  his 
"ritualism"  have  yielded  to  more  life  and  longer 
days  and  his  quite  prodigious,  but  so  closely  asso 
ciated,  gift  have  yielded  with  that  (as  though 
indissolubly  mixed  with  it)  ?  Or  would  a  big  de 
velopment  of  inspiration  and  form  have  come? 
Impossible  to  say  of  course — and  evidently  he  could 
have  been  but  most  fine  and  distinguished  what 
ever  should  have  happened.  Moreover  it  is  just  as 
we  have  him,  and  as  Bridges  has  so  scrupulously 
given  him,  that  he  so  touches  and  charms  the 
imagination  —  and  how  instinctive  poetic  mastery 
was  of  the  essence,  was  the  most  rooted  of  all 
things,  in  him,  a  faculty  or  mechanism  almost  ab 
normal,  seems  to  me  shown  by  the  thinness  of  his 
letters  compared  with  the  thickness  and  maturity 
of  his  verse.  But  how  can  one  talk,  and  how  can 
he  be  anything  but  wrapped,  for  our  delightful 
uncertainty,  in  the  silver  mists  of  morning? — which 
one  mustn't  so  much  as  want  to  breathe  upon  too 
hard,  much  less  clear  away.  They  are  an  immense 


AET.  70    TO  LOGAN  PEARSALL  SMITH     339 

felicity  to  him  and  leave  him  a  most  particular  little 
figure  in  the  great  English  roll.  I  sometimes  go  to 
Windsor,  and  the  very  next  one  I  shall  peregrin 
ate  over  to  Eton  on  the  chance  of  a  sight  of  his 
portrait. 

Yours  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  C.  Hagberg  Wright. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

Oct.  31st,  1913. 

Very  dear  Hagberg — (Don't  be  alarmed — it's 

only  me\) 

I  have  for  a  long  time  had  it  at  heart  to 
write  to  you — as  to  which  I  hear  you  comment: 
Why  the  hell  then  didn't  you?  Well,  because  my 
poor  old  initiative  (it  isn't  anything  indecent, 
though  it  looks  so)  has  become  in  these  days, 
through  physical  conditions,  extremely  impaired 
and  inapt — and  when  once,  some  weeks  ago,  I  had 
let  a  certain  very  right  and  proper  moment  pass, 
the  very  burden  I  should  have  to  lift  in  the  effort 
to  attenuate  that  delinquency  seemed  more  for 
midable  every  time  I  looked  at  it.  This  burden, 
or  rather,  to  begin  with,  this  delinquency,  lay  in 
the  fact  of  my  neither  having  signed  the  appeal 
about  the  Russian  prisoners  which  you  had  sent  me 
for  the  purpose  with  so  noble  and  touching  a  con 
fidence,  nor  had  the  decency  to  write  you  a  word  of 
attenuation  or  explanation.  I  should,  I  feel  now, 
have  signed  it,  for  you  and  without  question  and 
simply  because  you  asked  it — against  my  own  pri 
vate  judgment  in  fact;  for  that's  exactly  the  sort 
of  thing  I  should  like  to  do  for  you — publicly  and 
consciously  make  a  fool  of  myself:  as  (even  though 
I  grovel  before  you  generally  speaking)  I  feel  that 
signing  would  have  amounted  to  my  doing.  I  felt 


340       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1913 

that  at  the  time — but  also  wanted  just  to  oblige 
you — if  oblige  you  it  might!  "Then  why  the  hell 
didn't  you?"  I  hear  you  again  ask.  Well,  again, 
very  dear  Hagberg,  because  I  was  troubled  and 
unwell — very,  and  uncertain — very,  and  doomed 
for  the  time  to  drift,  to  bend,  quite  helplessly;  let 
ting  the  occasion  get  so  out  of  hand  for  me  that  I 
seemed  unable  to  recover  it  or  get  back  to  it.  The 
more  shame  to  me,  I  allow,  since  it  wasn't  a  ques 
tion  then  of  my  initiative,  but  just  of  the  responsive 
and  the  accommodating:  at  any  rate  the  question 
worried  me  and  I  weakly  temporised,  meaning  at 
the  same  time  independently  to  write  to  you — and 
then  my  disgrace  had  so  accumulated  that  there  was 
more  to  say  about  it  than  I  could  tackle:  which 
constituted  the  deterrent  burden  above  alluded  to. 
You  will  do  justice  to  the  impeccable  chain  of  my 
logic,  and  when  I  get  back  to  town,  as  I  now  very 
soon  shall  (by  the  15th — about — I  hope,)  you  will 
perhaps  do  even  me  justice — far  from  impeccable 
though  I  personally  am.  I  mean  when  we  can  talk 
again,  at  our  ease,  in  that  dear  old  gorgeous  gal 
lery — a  pleasure  that  I  shall  at  once  seek  to  bring 
about.  One  reason,  further,  of  my  graceless  fail 
ure  to  try  and  tell  you  why  (why  I  was  distraught 
about  signing,)  was  that  when  I  did  write  I  want 
ed  awfully  to  be  able  to  propose  to  you,  all  hope 
fully,  to  come  down  to  me  here  for  a  couple  of  days 
(perhaps  you  admirably  would  have  done  so;)  but 
was  in  fact  so  inapt,  in  my  then  condition,  for  any 
decent  or  graceful  discharge  of  the  office  of  host — 
thanks,  as  I  say,  to  my  beastly  physical  conscious 
ness — that  it  took  all  the  heart  out  of  me.  I  am 
comparatively  better  now  —  but  straining  toward 
Carlyle  Mansions  and  Pall  Mall.  It  was  above  all 
when  I  read  your  so  interesting  notice  of  Tolstoy's 
Letters  in  the  Times  that  I  wanted  to  make  you  a 
sign — but  even  that  initiative  failed.  Please  un 
derstand  that  nothing  will  induce  me  to  allow  you 


AET.  70      TO  C.  HAGBERG  WRIGHT          341 

to  make  the  least  acknowledgment  of  this.  I  shall 
be  horrified,  mind  you,  if  you  take  for  me  a  grain 
of  your  so  drained  and  despoiled  letter-energy. 
Keep  whatever  mercy  I  may  look  to  you  for  till 
we  meet.  I  don't  despair  of  melting  you  a  little 
toward  your  faithfullest 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Robert  Bridges. 

This  continues  the  subject  dealt  with  in  the  letter  to 
Mr.   Logan   Pearsall   Smith   of  Oct.   27,   1913. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

Nov.  7,  1913. 

My  dear  Bridges, 

How  delightful  to  hear  from  you  in  this 
generously  appreciative  way! — it  makes  me  very 
grateful  to  Logan  for  having  reported  to  you  of 
my  pleasure  in  your  beautiful  disclosure  of  young 
Dolben — which  seems  to  me  such  a  happy  chance 
for  you  to  have  had,  in  so  effective  conditions,  after 
so  many  years — I  mean  as  by  the  production  of 
cards  from  up  your  sleeve.  My  impression  of  your 
volume  was  indeed  a  very  lively  one — it  gave  me  a 
really  acute  emotion  to  thank  you  for:  which  is  a 
luxury  of  the  spirit  quite  rare  and  refreshing  at  my 
time  of  day.  Your  picture  of  your  extraordinary 
young  friend  suggests  so  much  beauty,  such  a  fine 
young  individual,  and  yet  both  suggests  it  in  such 
a  judging  and,  as  one  feels,  truth-keeping  a  way, 
that  the  effect  is  quite  different  from  that  of  the 
posthumous  tribute  to  the  early-gathered  in  gen 
eral — it  inspires  a  peculiar  confidence  and  respect. 
Difficult  to  do  I  can  well  imagine  the  thing  to  have 
been — keeping  the  course  between  the  too  great 
claim  and  the  too  timid ;  and  this  but  among  other 
complicated  matters.  I  feel  however  that  there  is 


34£       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1913 

need,  in  respect  to  the  poor  boy's  note  of  inspira 
tion,  of  no  shade  of  timidity  at  all — of  so  absolutely 
distinguished  a  reality  is  that  note,  given  the  age 
at  which  it  sounded:  such  fineness  of  impulse  and 
such  fineness  of  art — one  doesn't  really  at  all  know 
where  such  another  instance  lurks — in  the  like  con 
dition.  What  an  interesting  and  beautiful  one  to 
have  had  such  a  near  view  of — in  the  golden  age, 
and  to  have  been  able  to  recover  and  reconstruct 
with  such  tenderness — of  the  measured  and  respon 
sible  sort.  How  could  you  not  have  had  the  emo 
tion  which,  as  you  rightly  say,  can  be  such  an  ex 
traordinary  (on  occasion  such  a  miracle-working) 
quickener  of  memory ! — and  yet  how  could  you  not 
also,  I  see,  feel  shy  of  some  of  the  divagations  in 
that  line  to  which  your  subject  is  somehow  formed 
rather  to  lend  itself!  Your  tone  and  tact  seem  to 
me  perfect — and  the  rare  little  image  is  embedded 
in  them,  so  safely  and  cleanly,  for  duration — which 
is  a  real  "service,  from  you,  to  literature"  and  to 
our  sum  of  intelligent  life.  And  you  make  one  ask 
one's  self  just  enough,  I  think,  what  he  would  have 
meant  had  he  lived — without  making  us  do  so  too 
much.  I  don't  quite  see,  myself,  what  he  would 
have  meant,  and  the  result  is  an  odd  kind  of  con 
currence  in  his  charming,  flashing  catastrophe 
which  is  different  from  what  most  such  accidents,  in 
the  case  of  the  young  of  high  promise,  make  one 
feel.  However,  I  do  envy  you  the  young  experi 
ence  of  your  own,  and  the  abiding  sense  of  him  in 
his  actuality,  just  as  you  had  and  have  them,  and 
your  having  been  able  to  intervene  with  such  a  light 
and  final  authority  of  taste  and  tenderness.  I  say 
final  because  the  little  clear  medallion  will  hang 
there  exactly  as  you  have  framed  it,  and  your  vol 
ume  is  the  very  condition  of  its  hanging.  There 
should  be  absolutely  no  issue  of  the  poems  without 
your  introduction.  This  is  odd  or  anomalous  con 
sidering  what  the  best  of  them  are,  bless  them! — 


AET.  70         TO  ROBERT  BRIDGES  343 

but  it  is  exactly  the  best  of  them  that  most  want 
it.    I  hear  the  poor  young  spirit  call  on  you  out  of 
the  vague  to  stick  to  him.    But  you  always  will.— 
I  find  myself  so  glad  to  be  writing  to  you,  how 
ever,  that  I  only  now  become  aware  that  the  small 
hours  of  the  a.m.  are  getting  larger.  .  . 
Yours  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Andre  Raffalovich. 

This  refers  to  the  gift  of  the  Last  Letters  of  Aubrey 
Beardsley,  edited  by  Father  Gray   (1904). 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

November  7th,  1913. 

Dear  Andre  Raffalovich, 

I  thank  you  again  for  your  letter,  and  I 
thank  you  very  kindly  indeed  for  the  volume  of 
Beardsley's  letters,  by  which  I  have  been  greatly 
touched.  I  knew  him  a  little,  and  he  was  himself 
to  my  vision  touching,  and  extremely  individual; 
but  I  hated  his  productions  and  thought  them 
extraordinarily  base — and  couldn't  find  (perhaps 
didn't  try  enough  to  find!)  the  formula  that  recon 
ciled  this  baseness,  aesthetically,  with  his  being  so 
perfect  a  case  of  the  artistic  spirit.  But  now  the 
personal  spirit  in  him,  the  beauty  of  nature,  is  dis 
closed  to  me  by  your  letter  as  wonderful  and,  in 
the  conditions  and  circumstances,  deeply  pathetic 
and  interesting.  The  amenity,  the  intelligence,  the 
patience  and  grace  and  play  of  mind  and  of  tem 
per — how  charming  and  individual  an  exhibition! 
.  .  .  And  very  right  have  you  been  to  publish  the 
letters,  for  which  Father  Gray's  claim  is  indeed 
supported.  The  poor  boy  remains  quite  one  of 
the  few  distinguished  images  on  the  roll  of  young 


344       LETTERS  OP  HENRY  JAMES       1913 

English  genius  brutally  clipped,  a  victim  of  vic 
tims,  given  the  vivacity  of  his  endowment.  I  am 
glad  I  have  three  or  four  very  definite — though 
one  of  them  rather  disconcerting — recollections  of 
him. 

Very  curious  and  interesting  your  little  history 
of  your  migration  to  Edinburgh  —  on  the  social 
aspect  and  intimate  identity  of  which  you  must,  I 
imagine,  have  much  gathered  light  to  throw.  .  . 
And  you  are  still  young  enough  to  find  La  Prov 
ince  meets  your  case  too.  It  is  because  I  am  now 
so  very  far  from  that  condition  that  London  again 
(to  which  I  return  on  the  20th)  has  become  possible 
to  me  for  longer  periods :  I  am  so  old  that  I  have 
shamelessly  to  simplify,  and  the  simplified  London 
that  in  the  hustled  and  distracted  years  I  vainly  in 
voked,  has  come  round  to  me  easily  now,  and  for 
tunately  meets  my  case.  I  shall  be  glad  to  see  you 
there,  but  I  won't — thank  you,  no! — come  to  meat 
with  you  at  Claridge's.  One  doesn't  go  to  Cla- 
ridge's  if  one  simplifies.  I  am  obliged  now  abso 
lutely  never  to  dine  or  lunch  out  (a  bad  physical 
ailment  wholly  imposes  this:)  but  I  hope  you  will 
come  to  luncheon  with  me,  since  you  have  free 
range — on  very  different  vittles  from  the  Claridge, 
however,  if  you  can  stand  that.  I  count  on  your 
having  still  more  then  to  tell  me,  and  am  yours 
most  truly, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


AET.  70    TO  HENRY  JAMES,  JUNIOR         345 


To   Henry   James,   junior 

In  quoting  some  early  letters  of  William  James's  in 
Notes  of  a  Son  and  Brother,  H.  J.  had  not  thought  it 
necessary  to  reproduce  them  with  absolutely  literal  fidelity. 
The  following  interesting  account  of  his  procedure  was 
written  in  answer  to  some  queries  from  his  nephew  on 
the  subject. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
November  15th-18th,  1913. 

Dearest  Harry, 

...  It  is  very  difficult,  and  even  pretty 
painful,  to  try  to  put  forward  after  the  fact  the 
considerations  and  emotions  that  have  been  intense 
for  one  in  the  long  ferment  of  an  artistic  process: 
but  I  must  nevertheless  do  something  toward  mak 
ing  you  see  a  little  perhaps  how  ...  the  editing  of 
those  earliest  things  other  than  "rigidly"  had  for 
me  a  sort  of  exquisite  inevitability.  From  the  mo 
ment  of  those  of  my  weeks  in  Cambridge  of  1911 
during  which  I  began,  by  a  sudden  turn  of  talk 
with  your  Mother,  to  dally  with  the  idea  of  a 
"Family  Book,"  this  idea  took  on  for  me  a  par 
ticular  light,  the  light  which  hasn't  varied,  through 
all  sorts  of  discomfitures  and  difficulties — and  dis- 
illusionments,  and  in  which  in  fact  I  have  put  the 
thing  through.  That  turn  of  talk  was  the  germ,  it 
dropped  the  seed.  Once  when  I  had  been  "remi 
niscing"  over  some  matters  of  your  Dad's  and  my 
old  life  of  the  time  previous,  far  previous,  to  her 
knowing  us,  over  some  memories  of  our  Father  and 
Mother  and  the  rest  of  us,  I  had  moved  her  to  ex 
claim  with  the  most  generous  appreciation  and 
response,  "Oh  Henry,  why  don't  you  write  these 
things?" — with  such  an  effect  that  after  a  bit 
I  found  myself  wondering  vaguely  whether  I 
mightn't  do  something  of  the  sort.  But  it  dated 
from  those  words  of  your  Mother's,  which  gave 


346      LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES        1913 

me  the  impulse  and  determined  the  spirit  of  my 
vision — a  spirit  and  a  vision  as  far  removed  as 
possible  from  my  mere  isolated  documentation  of 
your  Father's  record.  We  talked  again,  and  still 
again,  of  the  "Family  Book,"  and  by  the  time  I 
came  away  I  felt  I  had  somehow  found  my  inspira 
tion,  though  the  idea  could  only  be  most  experi 
mental,  and  all  at  the  mercy  of  my  putting  it,  per 
haps  defeatedly,  to  the  proof.  It  was  such  a  very 
special  and  delicate  and  discriminated  thing  to  do, 
and  only  governable  by  proprieties  and  considera 
tions  all  of  its  own,  as  I  should  evidently,  in  the 
struggle  with  it,  more  and  more  find.  This  is  what 
I  did  find  above  all  in  coming  at  last  to  work  these 
Cambridge  letters  into  the  whole  harmony  of  my 
text — the  general  purpose  of  which  was  to  be  a 
reflection  of  all  the  amenity  and  felicity  of  our 
young  life  of  that  time  at  the  highest  pitch  that  was 
consistent  with  perfect  truth — to  show  us  all  at  our 
best  for  characteristic  expression  and  colour  and 
variety  and  everything  that  would  be  charming. 
And  when  I  laid  hands  upon  the  letters  to  use  as 
so  many  touches  and  tones  in  the  picture,  I  frank 
ly  confess  I  seemed  to  see  them  in  a  better,  or  at 
all  events  in  another  light,  here  and  there,  than 
those  rough  and  rather  illiterate  copies  I  had  from 
you  showed  at  their  face  value.  I  found  myself 
again  in  such  close  relation  with  your  Father,  such 
a  revival  of  relation  as  I  hadn't  known  since  his 
death,  and  which  was  a  passion  of  tenderness  for 
doing  the  best  thing  by  him  that  the  material  al 
lowed,  and  which  I  seemed  to  feel  him  in  the  room 
and  at  my  elbow  asking  me  for  as  I  worked  and 
as  he  listened.  It  was  as  if  he  had  said  to  me  on 
seeing  me  lay  my  hands  on  the  weak  little  relics 
of  our  common  youth,  "Oh  but  you're  not  going  to 
give  me  away,  to  hand  me  over,  in  my  raggedness 
and  my  poor  accidents,  quite  unhelped,  unfriendly: 
you're  going  to  do  the  very  best  for  me  you  can, 


AET.  TO      TO  HENRY  JAMES,  JUNIOR       347 

aren't  you,  and  since  you  appear  to  be  making 
such  claims  for  me  you're  going  to  let  me  seem  to 
justify  them  as  much  as  I  possibly  may?"  And  it 
was  as  if  I  kept  spiritually  replying  to  this  that 
he  might  indeed  trust  me  to  handle  him  with  the 
last  tact  and  devotion — that  is  do  with  him  every 
thing  I  seemed  to  feel  him  like,  for  being  kept  up 
to  the  amenity  pitch.  These  were  small  things,  the 
very  smallest,  they  appeared  to  me  all  along  to 
be,  tiny  amendments  in  order  of  words,  degrees  of 
emphasis  &c.,  to  the  end  that  he  should  be  more 
easily  and  engagingly  readable  and  thereby  more 
tasted  and  liked — from  the  moment  there  was  no 
excess  of  these  soins  and  no  violence  done  to  his 
real  identity.  Everything  the  letters  meant  affect 
ed  me  so,  in  all  the  business,  as  of  our  old  world 
only,  mine  and  his  alone  together,  with  every  item 
of  it  intimately  known  and  remembered  by  me, 
that  I  daresay  I  did  instinctively  regard  it  at  last 
as  all  my  truth,  to  do  what  I  would  with.  ...  I 
have  to  the  last  point  the  instinct  and  the  sense  for 
fusions  and  interrelations,  for  framing  and  en 
circling  (as  I  think  I  have  already  called  it)  every 
part  of  my  stuff  in  every  other — and  that  makes  a 
danger  when  the  frame  and  circle  play  over  too 
much  upon  the  image.  Never  again  shall  I  stray 
from  my  proper  work — the  one  in  which  that  dan 
ger  is  the  reverse  of  one  and  becomes  a  Tightness 
and  a  beauty.  .  .  . 

I  may  mention  however  that  your  exception  that 
particularly  caught  my  eye — to  "poor  old  Abra 
ham"  for  "poor  old  Abe" — was  a  case  for  change 
that  I  remember  feeling  wholly  irresistible.  Never, 
never,  under  our  Father's  roof  did  we  talk  of  Abe, 
either  tout  court  or  as  "Abe  Lincoln" — it  wasn't 
conceivable :  Abraham  Lincoln  he  was  for  us,  when 
he  wasn't  either  Lincoln  or  Mr.  Lincoln  (the  Wes 
tern  note  and  the  popularization  of  "Abe"  were 
quite  away  from  us  tJieni)  and  the  form  of  the 


348       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       igis 

name  in  your  Dad's  letter  made  me  reflect  how  off, 
how  far  off  in  his  queer  other  company  than  ours 
I  must  at  the  time  have  felt  him  to  be.  You  will 
say  that  this  was  just  a  reason  for  leaving  it  so — 
and  so  in  a  sense  it  was.  But  I  could  hear  him 
say  Abraham  and  couldn't  hear  him  say  Abe,  and 
the  former  came  back  to  me  as  sincere,  also  graver 
and  tenderer  and  more  like  ourselves,  among 
whom  I  couldn't  imagine  any  "Abe"  ejaculation 
under  the  shock  of  his  death  as  possible.  .  .  . 
However,  I  am  not  pretending  to  pick  up  any 
particular  challenge  to  my  appearance  of  wanton 
ness — I  should  be  able  to  justify  myself  (when 
able)  only  out  of  such  abysses  of  association,  and 
the  stirring  up  of  these,  for  vindication,  is  simply 
a  strain  that  stirs  up  tears. 

Yours,  dearest  Harry,  all  affectionately, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Edmund  Gosse. 

The  portrait  of  H.  J.  (together  with  the  bust  by  Mr. 
Derwent  Wood)  had  been  on  exhibition  to  the  subscribers 
in  Mr.  Sargent's  studio  in  Tite  Street.  The  "slight  flaw 
in  the  title"  had  been  the  accidental  omission  of  the  sub 
scribers'  names  in  the  printed  announcement  sent  to  them, 
whereby  the  letter  opened  familiarly  with  "Dear" — with 
out  further  formality.  It  was  partly  to  repair  the  over 
sight  that  H.  J.  had  "put  himself  on  exhibition"  each  day 
beside  the  portrait. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

December  18th,  1913. 
My  dear  Gosse, 

The  exquisite  incident  in  Tite  Street  having 
happily  closed,  I  have  breathing  time  to  thank  you 
for  the  goodly  Flaubert  volume,  which  safely  ar 
rived  yesterday  and  which  helps  me  happily  out  of 


AET.  70  TO  EDMUND  GOSSE  349 

my  difficulty.     You  shall  receive  it  again  as  soon 
as  I  have  made  my  respectful  use  of  it. 

The  exhibition  of  the  Portrait  came  to  a  most 
brilliant  end  to-day,  with  a  very  great  affluence 
of  people.      (There  have   been  during  the  three 
days  an  immense  number.)     It  has  been  a  great 
and  charming  success— I  mean  the  View  has  been; 
and  the  work  itself  acclaimed  with  an  unanimity 
of  admiration  and,  literally,  of  intelligence,  that  I 
can  intimately  testify  to.    For  I  really  put  myself 
on  exhibition  beside  it,  each  of  the  days,  morning 
and  afternoon,  and  the  translation  (a  perfect  Omar 
Khayyam,  quoi!)  visibly  left  the  original  nowhere. 
I    attended  —  most   assiduously;    and    can    really 
assure  you  that  it  has  been  a  most  beautiful  and 
flawless  episode.     The  slight  original  flaw  (in  the 
title)  I  sought  to  bury  under  a  mountain  of  flow 
ers,  till  I  found  that  it  didn't  in  the  least  do  to 
"explain  it  away,"  as  every  one    (like  the  dear 
Ranee)    said:  they  exclaimed  too  ruefully   "Ah, 
don't  tell  me  you  didn't  mean  it!"    After  which  I 
let  it  alone,  and  speedily  recognised  that  it  was 
really  the  flower — even  if  but  a  little  wayward  wild 
flower!— of  our  success.     I   am  pectorally  much 
spent  with  affability  and  emissions  of  voice,  but  as 
soon  as  the  tract  heals  a  little  I  shall  come  and 
ask  to  be  heard  in  your  circle.     Be  meanwhile  at 
great  peace  and  ease,  at  perfect  rest  about  every 
thing. 

Yours  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


350       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1913 


To  Bruce  L.  Richmond. 

The  projected  article  on  "The  New  Novel"  afterwards 
appeared  in  two  numbers  of  the  Times  Literary  Supple 
ment,  and  was  reprinted  in  Notes  on  Novelists. 

Dictated. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

December  19th,  1913. 

Dear  Bruce  Richmond, 

Your  good  letter  of  a  day  or  two  ago  is 
most  interesting  and  suggestive  and  puts  to  me 
as  lucidly  as  possible  the  questions  with  which  the 
appearance  of  my  so  copious  George  Sand  is  in 
volved.  I  have  been  turning  the  matter  earnestly 
over,  and  rather  think  I  had  best  tell  you  now  at 
once  in  what  form  it  presses  on  myself.  This  forces 
me  to  consider  it  in  a  particular  light.  It  has  come 
up  for  me  that  I  shall  be  well  advised  (from  my 
own  obscure  point  of  view!)  to  collect  into  a  vol 
ume  and  publish  at  an  early  date  a  number  of  un- 
gathered  papers  that  have  appeared  here  and  there 
during  the  last  fifteen  years;  these  being  mainly 
concerned  with  the  tribe  of  the  Novelists.  This 
involves  my  asking  your  leave  to  include  in  the 
Book  the  article  on  Balzac  of  a  few  months  ago, 
and  my  original  idea  was  that  if  the  G.S.  should 
appear  in  the  Supplement  at  once,  you  would 
probably  authorize  my  reprinting  it  also  after  a 
decent  little  interval.  As  the  case  stands,  and  as 
I  so  well  understand  it  on  your  showing — the  case 
for  the  Supplement  I  mean — I  am  afraid  that  I 
shall  really  need  the  G.S.  paper  for  the  Volume 
before  you  will  have  had  time  to  put  it  forth  at 
your  entire  convenience — the  only  thing  I  would 
have  wished  you  to  consider.  What  should  you 
say  to  my  withdrawing  the  paper  in  question  from 


AET.  70      TO  BRUCE  L.  RICHMOND          351 

your  indulgent  hands,  and — as  the  possibility  glim 
mers  before  me — making  you  a  compensation  in 
the  way  of  something  addressed  with  greater  actu 
ality  and  more  of  a  certain  current  significance  to 
the   Spring   Fiction   Number   that  you  mention? 
(The  words,  you  know,  if  you  can  forgive  my 
irreverence — I  divine  in  fact  that  you  share  it! — 
somehow    suggest   competition   with    a   vast   case 
of  plate-glass  "window-dressing"  at  Selfridge's!) 
The  G.S.  isn't  really  a  very  fit  or  near  thing  for 
the  purpose  of  such  a  number:  that  lady  is  as  a 
fictionist  too  superannuated  and  rococo  at  the  pres 
ent  time  to  have  much  bearing  on  any  of  those 
questions  pure  and  simple.    My  article  really  deals 
with  her  on  quite  a  different  side — as  you  would 
see  on  coming  to  look  into  it.     Should  you  kindly 
surrender  it  to  me  again  I  would  restore  to  it  four 
or  five  pages  that  I  excised  in  sending  it  to  you— 
so  monstrously  had  it  rounded  itself! — and  make 
it  thereby  a  still  properer  thing  for  my  Book,  where 
it  would  add  itself  to  two  other  earlier  studies  of 
the  same  subject,  as  the  Balzac  of  the  Supplement 
will  likewise  do.    And  if  you  ask  me  what  you  then 
gain  by  your  charming  generosity  I  just  make  bold 
to  say  that  there  looms  to  me  (though  I  have  just 
called  it  glimmering)    the  conception  of  a  paper 
really  related  to  our  own  present  ground  and  air — 
which  shall  gather  in  several  of  the  better  of  the 
younger  generation  about  us,  some  half  dozen  of 
whom  I  think  I  can  make  out  as  treatable,  and  try 
to  do  under  tlieir  suggestion  something  that  may 
be  of  real  reference  to  our  conditions,  and  of  some 
interest  about  them  or  help  for  them.  .  .  .  Do  you 
mind  my  going  so  far  as  to- say  even,  as  a  battered 
old  practitioner,  that  I  have  sometimes  yearningly 
wished  I  might  intervene  a  little  on  the  subject 
of  the  Supplement's  Notices  of  Novels — in  which, 
frankly,  I  seem  to  have  seen,  often,  so  many  occa 
sions  missed!    Of  course  the  trouble  is  that  all  the 


352       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1913 

books  in  question,  or  most  of  them  at  least,  are  such 
wretchedly  poor  occasions  in  themselves.  If  it 
hadn't  been  for  this  I  think  I  should  have  two  or 
three  times  quite  said  to  you:  "Won't  you  let  me 
have  a  try?"  But  when  it  came  to  considering  I 
couldn't  alas,  probably,  either  have  read  the  books 
or  pretended  to  give  time  and  thought  to  them.  '  It 
is  in  truth  only  because  I  half  persuade  myself  that 
there  are,  as  I  say,  some  half  a  dozen  selectable 
cases  that  the  possibility  hovers  before  me.  Will 
you  consider  at  your  leisure  the  plea  thus  put?  I 
shouldn't  want  my  paper  back  absolutely  at  once, 
though  in  the  event  of  your  kindly  gratifying  me 
I  should  like  it  before  very  long. 

I  am  really  working  out  a  plan  of  approach  to 
your  domicile  in  the  conditions  most  favourable  to 
my  seeing  you  as  well  as  Elena,  and  it  will  in  due 
course  break  upon  you,  if  it  doesn't  rather  take 
the  form  of  my  trying  to  drag  you  both  hither! 
Believe  me  all  faithfully  yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Hugh  Walpole. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

Jan.  2,  1914. 

...  I  have  just  despatched  your  inclosure  to 
P.  L.  at  I,  Dorotheergasse  6,  Vienna;  an  address 
that  I  recommend  your  taking  a  note  of;  and  I  have 
also  made  the  reflection  that  the  fury,  or  whatever, 
that  Edinburgh  inspires  you  with  ought,  you  know, 
to  do  the  very  opposite  of  drying  up  the  founts  of 
your  genius  in  writing  to  me — since  you  say  your 
letter  would  have  been  other  (as  it  truly  might  have 
been  longer)  didn't  you  suffer  so  from  all  that  sur 
rounds  you.  That's  the  very  most  juvenile  logic 


AET.  70  TO  HUGH  WALPOLE  353 

possible — and  the  juvenility  of  it  (which  yet  in  a 
manner  touches  me)  is  why  I  call  you  retrogressive 
— by  way  of  a  long  stroke  of  endearment.     There 
was  exactly  an  admirable  matter  for  you  to  write 
me  about — a  matter  as  to  which  you  are  strongly 
and  abundantly  feeling;  and  in  a  relation  which 
lives  on  communication  as  ours  surely  should,  and 
would  (save  for  starving,)  such  occasions  fertilise. 
However,  of  course  the  terms  are  easy  on  which 
you  extract  communication  from  me,  and  always 
have  been,  and  always  will  be  —  so  that  there's 
doubtless  a  point  of  view  from  which  your  reserva 
tions    (another  fine  word)    are  quite  right.     I'm 
glad  at  any  rate  that  you've  been  reading  Balzac 
(whose  "romantic"  side  is  rot!)  and  a  great  con 
temporary  of  your  own  even  in  his  unconsidered 
trifles.    I've  just  been  reading  Compton  Macken 
zie's  Sinister  Street  and  finding  in  it  an  unexpected 
amount  of  talent  and  life.    Really  a  very  interest 
ing  and  remarkable  performance,  I  think,  in  spite 
of  a  considerable,  or  large,  element  of  waste  and 
irresponsibility — selection  isn't  in  him — and  at  one 
and  the  same  time  so  extremely  young  (he  too)  and 
so  confoundingly  mature.     It  has  the  feature  of 
improving  so  as  it  goes  on,  and  disposes  me  much 
to  read,  if  I  can,  its  immediate  predecessor.     You 
must  tell  me  again  what  you  know  of  him   (I've 
forgotten  what  you  did  tell  me,  more  or  less,)  but 
in  your  own  good  time.    I  think— I  mean  I  blindly 
feel — I  should  be  with  you  about  Auld  Reekie — 
which  somehow  hasn't  a  right  to  be  so  handsome. 
But  I  long  for  illustrations  —  at  your  own  good 
time.     We  have  emerged  from  a  very  clear  and 
quiet  Xmas — quiet  for  me,  save  for  rather  a  large 
assault  of  correspondence.     It  weighs  on  me  still, 
so  this  is  what  I  call — and  you  will  too — very  brief. 
...  I  wish  you  the  very  decentest  New  Year  that 
ever  was.     Yours,  dearest  boy,  all  affectionately, 

H.  J.' 


354       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1914 


To  Compton  Mackenzie. 

It  will  be  recalled  that  Edward  Compton,  Mr.  Mac 
kenzie's  father,  had  played  the  part  of  Christopher  New 
man  in  H.  J.'s  play  The  American,  produced  in  1891. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 

Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 
Jan.  21,  1914. 

My  dear  "Monty  Compton!" — 

For  that  was,  I  think,  as  I  first  heard  you 
named — by  a  worthy  old  actress  of  your  father's 
company  who,  when  we  were  rehearsing  The 
American  in  some  touring  town  to  which  I  had 
gone  for  the  purpose-,  showed  me  with  touching 
elation  a  story-book  she  had  provided  for  you  on 
the  occasion  of  your  birthday.  That  story-book, 
weighted  with  my  blessing  on  it,  evidently  sealed 
your  vocation — for  the  sharpness  of  my  sense  that 
you  are  really  a  prey  to  the  vocation  was  what,  after 
reading  you,  I  was  moved  to  emphasise  to  Pinker. 
I  am  glad  he  let  you  know  of  this,  and  it  gives  me 
great  pleasure  that  you  have  written  to  me  —  the 
only  abatement  of  which  is  learning  from  you  that 
you  are  in  such  prolonged  exile  on  grounds  of 
health.  May  that  dizzying  sun  of  Capri  cook  every 
peccant  humour  out  of  you.  As  to  this  untoward- 
ness  I  mean,  frankly,  to  inquire  of  your  Mother — 
whom  I  am  already  in  communication  with  on  the 
subject  of  going  to  see  her  to  talk  about  you!  For 
that,  my  dear  young  man,  I  feel  as  a  need:  with 
the  force  that  I  find  and  so  much  admire  in  your 
talent  your  genesis  becomes,  like  the  rest  of  it,  in 
teresting  and  remarkable  to  me;  you  are  so  rare  a 
case  of  the  kind  of  reaction  from  the  theatre — and 
from  so  much  theatre — and  the  reaction  in  itself 
is  rare — as  seldom  taking  place;  and  when  it  does 


AET.  70     TO  COMPTON  MACKENZIE         355 

it  is  mostly,  I  think,  away  from  the  arts  alto 
gether — it  is  violent  and  utter.    But  your  pushing 
straight  through  the  door  into  literature  and  then 
closing  it  so  tight  behind  you  and  putting  the  key 
in  your  pocket,  as  it  were — that  strikes  me  as  un 
usual  and  brilliant!     However,  it  isn't  to  go  into 
all  that  that  I  snatch  these  too  few  minutes,  but  to 
thank  you  for  having  so  much  arrested  my  atten 
tion,   as  by  the  effect   of   Carnival   and   Sinister 
Street,  on  what  I  confess  I  am  for  the  most  part 
(as  a  consequence  of  some  thankless  experiments) 
none  too  easily  beguiled  by,  a  striking  exhibition 
by  a  member  of  the  generation  to  which  you  belong. 
When  I  wrote  to  Pinker  I  had  only  read  S.S.,  but 
I  have  now  taken  down   Carnival  in  persistent 
short  draughts— which  is  how  I  took  S.S.  and  is 
how  I  take  anything  I  take  at  all;  and  I  have  given 
myself  still  further  up  to  the  pleasure,  quite  to  the 
emotion,  of  intercourse  with  a  young  talent  that 
really  moves  one  to  hold  it  to  an  account.    Yours 
strikes  me  as  very  living  and  real  and  sincere,  mak 
ing  me  care  for  it— to  anxiety— care  above  all  for 
what  shall  become  of  it.     You  ought,  you  know, 
to  do  only  some  very  fine  and  ripe  things,  really 
solid  and  serious  and  charming  ones ;  but  your  dan 
gers  are  almost  as  many  as  your  aspects,  and  as 

I  am  a  mere  monster  of  appreciation  when  I  read 

by  which  I  mean  of  the  critical  passion— I  would 
fain  lay  an  earnest  and  communicative  hand  on 
you  and  hypnotize  or  otherwise  bedevil  you  into 
proceeding  as  I  feel  you  most  ought  to,  you  know. 
The  great  point  is  that  I  would  so  fain  personally 
see  you— that  we  may  talk;  and  I  do  very  much 
wish  that  you  had  given  me  a  chance  at  one  of  those 
moments  when  you  tell  me  you  inclined  to  it,  and 
then  held  off.  You  are  so  intelligent,  and  it's  a 
blessing— whereby  I  prefigure  it  as  a  luxury  to 
have  a  go  at  you.  I  am  to  be  in  town  till  the' end 
of  June— I  hibernate  no  more  at  Rye;  and  if  you 


356       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1914 

were  only  to  turn  up  a  little  before  that  it  would  be 
excellent.  Otherwise  you  must  indeed  come  to 
me  there.  I  wish  you  all  profit  of  all  your  experi 
ence,  some  of  it  lately,  I  fear,  rather  harsh,  and 
all  experience  of  your  genius — which  I  also  wish 
myself.  I  think  of  Sinister  Street  II,  and  am 
yours  most  truly, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  William  Roughead,  W.  S. 

Mr.  Roughead  had  sent  H.  J.  his  edition  of  the  trial 
of  Mary  Blandy,  the  notable  murderess,  who  was  hung 
in  1752  for  poisoning  her  father. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

January  29th,  1914. 
Dear  Mr.  Roughead, 

I  devoured  the  tender  Blandy  in  a  single 
feast ;  I  thank  you  most  kindly  for  having*  antici 
pated  so  handsomely  my  appetite;  and  I  highly 
appreciate  the  terms  in  general,  and  the  concluding 
ones  in  particular,  in  which  you  serve  her  up.  You 
tell  the  story  with  excellent  art  and  animation,  and 
it's  quite  a  gem  of  a  story  in  its  way,  History  her 
self  having  put  it  together  as  with  the  best  com 
positional  method,  a  strong  sense  for  sequences  and 
the  proper  march,  order  and  time.  The  only  thing 
is  that,  as  always,  one  wants  to  know  more,  more 
than  the  mere  evidence  supplies — and  wants  it 
even  when  as  in  this  case  one  feels  that  the  people 
concerned  were  after  all  of  so  dire  a  simplicity, 
so  primitive  a  state  of  soul  and  sense,  that  the  ex 
hibition  they  make  tells  or  expresses  about  all 
there  was  of  them.  Dear  Mary  must  have  con 
sisted  but  of  two  or  three  pieces,  one  of  which  was 
a  strong  and  simple  carnal  affinity,  as  it  were,  with 
the  stinking  little  Cranstoun.  Yet,  also,  one  would 


AET.  TO  TO  WILLIAM  ROUGHEAD,  W.S.   357 

like  to  get  a  glimpse  of  how  an  apparently  normal 
young  woman  of  her  class,  at  that  period,  could 
have  viewed  such  a  creature  in  such  a  light.  The 
light  would  throw  itself  on  the  Taste,  the  sense  of 
proportion,  of  the  time.  However,  dear  Mary  was 
a  clear  barbarian,  simply.  Enfin! — as  one  must 
always  wind  up  these  matters  by  exhaling.  I  con 
tinue  to  have  escaped  a  further  sense  of and 

as  I  think  I  have  told  you  I  cultivate  the  exquisite 
art  of  ignorance.  Yet  not  of  Blandy,  Pritchard 
and  Co. — there,  perversely,  I  am  all  for  knowledge. 
Do  continue  to  feed  in  me  that  languishing  need, 
and  believe  me  all  faithfully  yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

The  two  novels  referred  to  in  the  following  are  M. 
Marcel  Proust's  Du  Cote  de  che£  Swann  and  M.  Abel 
Bonnard's  La  Vie  et  I' Amour. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

February  25th,  1914. 
Dearest  Edith, 

The  nearest  I  have  come  to  receipt  or  pos 
session  of  the  interesting  volumes  you  have  so 
generously  in  mind  is  to  have  had  Bernstein's 
assurance,  when  I  met  him  here  some  time  since, 
that  he  would  give  himself  the  delight  of  sending 
me  the  Proust  production,  which  he  learned  from 
me  that  I  hadn't  seen.  I  tried  to  dissuade  him 
from  this  excess,  but  nothing  would  serve — he  was 
too  yearningly  bent  upon  it,  and  we  parted  with 
his  asseveration  that  I  might  absolutely  count  on 
this  tribute  both  to  poor  Proust's  charms  and  to 
my  own.  But  depuis  lors — !  he  has  evidently  been 
less  "en  train"  than  he  was  so  good  as  to  find  me. 


358       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1014 

So  that  I  shall  indeed  be  "very  pleased"  to  receive 
the  "Swarm"  and  the  "Vie  et  1'Amour"  from  you 
at  your  entire  convenience.  It  is  indeed  beautiful 
of  you  to  think  of  these  little  deeds  of  kindness, 
little  words  of  love  (or  is  it  the  other  way  round?) 
What  I  want  above  all  to  thank  you  for,  however, 
is  your  so  brave  backing  in  the  matter  of  my  dis- 
garnished  gums.  That  I  am  doing  right  is  already 
unmistakeable.  It  won't  make  me  "well" ;  nothing 
will  do  that,  nor  do  I  complain  of  the  muffled 
miracle;  but  it  will  make  me  mind  less  being  ill — 
in  short  it  will  make  me  better.  As  I  say,  it  has 
already  done  so,  even  with  my  sacrifice  for  the 
present  imperfect — for  I  am  "keeping  on"  no  less 
than  eight  pure  pearls,  in  front  seats,  till  I  can 
deal  with  them  in  some  less  exposed  and  exposing 
conditions.  Meanwhile  tons  of  implanted  and 
domesticated  gold  &c  (one's  caps  and  crowns  and 
bridges  being  most  anathema  to  Des  Voeux,  who 
regards  them  as  so  much  installed  metallic  poison) 
have,  with  everything  they  fondly  clung  to,  been, 
less  visibly,  eradicated;  and  it  is  enough,  as  I  say, 
to  have  made  a  marked  difference  in  my  felt  state. 
That  is  the  point,  for  the  time — and  I  spare  you 
further  details.  .  .  . 

Yours  de  coeur, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Dr.  J.  William  White. 

Dictated. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

March  2nd,  1914. 
My  dear  J.  William, 

I  won't  pretend  it  isn't  an  aid  and  comfort  to 
me  to  be  able  to  thank  you  for  your  so  brilliant  and 
interesting  overflow  from  Sumatra  in  this  mean 


AET.  70    TO  DR.  J.  WILLIAM  WHITE        359 

way — since  from  the  point  of  view  of  such  a  life 
as  you  are  leading  nothing  I  could  possibly  do  in 
my  poor  sphere  and  state  would  seem  less  mean 
than  anything  else,  and  I  therefore  might  as  well 
get  the  good  of  being  legible.  I  am  such  a  votary 
and  victim  of  the  single  impression  and  the  im 
perceptible  adventure,  picked  up  by  accident  and 
cherished,  as  it  were,  in  secret,  that  your  scale  of 
operation  and  sensation  would  be  for  me  the  most 
choking,  the  most  fatal  of  programmes,  and  I 
should  simply  go  ashore  at  Sumatra  and  refuse 
ever  to  fall  into  line  again.  But  that  is  simply  my 
contemptible  capacity,  which  doesn't  want  a  little 
of  five  million  things,  but  only  requires  [much]  of 
three  or  four;  as  to  which  then,  I  confess,  my  re 
quirements  are  inordinate.  But  I  am  so  glad,  for 
the  world  and  for  themselves,  above  all  for  you  and 
Letitia,  that  many  great  persons,  and  especially 
you  two,  are  constructed  on  nobler  lines,  with 
stouter  organs  and  longer  breaths,  to  say  nothing 
of  purses,  that  I  don't  in  the  least  mind  your  doing 
such  things  if  you  don't;  and  most  positively  and 
richly  enjoy  sitting  under  the  warm  and  fragrant 
spray  of  the  enumeration  of  them.  Keep  it  up 
therefore,  and  don't  let  me  hear  of  your  daring  to 
skip  a  single  page,  or  dodge  a  single  prescription, 
of  the  programme  and  the  dose !  .  .  . 

I  am  signing,  with  J.  S.  S.,  three  hundred  very 
fine  photographs  of  the  Portrait,  ever  so  much 
finer  still,  that  he  did  of  me  last  summer,  and'which 
I  think  you  know  about — in  order  that  they  be 
sent  to  my  friends,  of  whom  you  are  not  the  least; 
so  that  you  will  find  one  in  Rittenhouse  Square  on 
your  return  thither,  if  with  the  extraordinarily  dis 
sipated  life  you  lead  you  do  really  get  back.  With 
it  will  wait  on  you  probably  this,  which  I  hope 
won't  be  sent  either  to  meet  or  to  follow  you;  I 
really  can't  even  to  the  extent  of  a  letter  personally 
participate  in  your  dissipation  while  it's  at  its 


360       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       tau 

worst.  How  embarrassed  poor  Letitia  must  truly 
be,  if  she  but  dared  to  confess  it,  at  finding  herself 
so  associated;  for  that  is  not  her  nature;  my  life 
here,  had  she  but  consented  to  share  it,  would  be  so 
much  more  congruous  with  that  I  I  don't  quite 
gather  when  you  expect  to  reach  these  shores — since 
my  brain  reels  at  the  thought  of  your  re-embarking 
for  them  after  you  reach  your  own  at  the  climax 
of  your  orgy.  I  realise  all  that  these  passions  are 
capable  of  leading  you  on  to,  and  therefore  shall 
not  be  surprised  if  you  do  pursue  them  without  a 
break — shall  in  fact  even  be  delighted  to  think  I 
may  see  you  gloriously  approach  by  just  sitting 
right  here  at  this  window,  which  commands  so  the 
prospect.  But  goodbye,  dear  good  friends ;  gather 
your  roses  while  ye  may  and  don't  neglect  this 
blighted  modest  old  bud,  your  affectionate  friend, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Henry  Adams. 

The  book  sent  to  Mr.  Adams  was  Notes  of  a  Son  and 
Brother,  now  just  published. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

March  21,  1914. 
My  dear  Henry, 

I  have  your  melancholy  outpouring  of  the 
7th,  and  I  know  not  how  better  to  acknowledge  it 
than  by  the  full  recognition  of  its  unmitigated 
blackness.  Of  course  we  are  lone  survivors,  of 
course  the  past  that  was  our  lives  is  at  the  bot 
tom  of  an  abyss — if  the  abyss  has  any  bottom;  of 
course,  too,  there's  no  use  talking  unless  one  par 
ticularly  wants  to.  But  the  purpose,  almost,  of 
my  printed  divagations  was  to  show  you  that  one 
can,,  strange  to  say,  still  want  to — or  at  least  can 
behave  as  if  one  did.  Behold  me  therefore  so  be- 


AET.  70  TO   HENRY   ADAMS  361 

having — and  apparently  capable  of  continuing  to 
do  so.  I  still  find  my  consciousness  interesting — 
under  cultivation  of  the  interest.  Cultivate  it  with 
me,  dear  Henry — that's  what  I  hoped  to  make  you 
do — to  cultivate  yours  for  all  that  it  has  in  common 
with  mine.  Why  mine  yields  an  interest  I  don't 
know  that  I  can  tell  you,  but  I  don't  challenge  or 
quarrel  with  it — I  encourage  it  with  a  ghastly  grin. 
You  see  I  still,  in  presence  of  life  (or  of  what  you 
deny  to  be  such,)  have  reactions — as  many  as  pos 
sible — and  the  book  I  sent  you  is  a  proof  of  them. 
It's,  I  suppose,  because  I  am  that  queer  monster, 
the  artist,  an  obstinate  finality,  an  inexhaustible 
sensibility.  Hence  the  reactions — appearances, 
memories,  many  things,  go  on  playing  upon  it 
with  consequences  that  I  note  and  "enjoy"  (grim 
word!)  noting.  It  all  takes  doing — and  I  do.  I 
believe  I  shall  do  yet  again — it  is  still  an  act  of 
life.  But  you  perform  them  still  yourself — and 
I  don't  know  what  keeps  me  from  calling  your 
letter  a  charming  one!  There  we  are,  and  it's  a 
blessing  that  you  understand — I  admit  indeed 
alone — your  all-faithful 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  William  James. 

"Minnie"  is  of  course  Mary  Temple,  the  young  cousin 
of  old  days  commemorated  in  the  last  chapter  of  Notes 
of  a  Son  and  Brother. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

March  29th,  1914. 
Dearest  Alice, 

This  is  a  Saturday  a.m.,  but  several  days 
have  come  and  gone  since  there  came  to  me  your 
dear  and  beautiful  letter  of  March  14th  (consider 
ably  about  my  "Notes,")  and  though  the  American 


362       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1914 

post  closes  early  I  must  get  off  some  word  of 
recognition  to  you,  however  brief  I  have  scram- 
blingly  to  make  it.  I  hoped  of  course  you  would 
find  in  the  book  something  of  what  I  difficultly 
tried  to  put  there — and  you  have  indeed,  you  have 
found  all,  and  I  rejoice,  because  it  was  in  talk  with 
you  in  that  terrible  winter  of  1910-11  that  the  im 
pulse  to  the  whole  attempt  came  to  me.  Glad  you 
will  be  to  know  that  the  thing  appears  to  be  quite 
extraordinarily  appreciated,  absolutely  acclaimed, 
here — scarcely  any  difficulties  being  felt  as  to 
' 'parts  that  are  best,"  unless  it  be  that  the  early 
passage  and  the  final  chapter  about  dear  Minnie 
seem  the  great,  the  beautiful  "success"  of  the  whole. 
What  I  have  been  able  to  do  for  her  after  all  the 
long  years — judged  by  this  test  of  expressed 
admiration — strikes  me  as  a  wondrous  stroke  of 
fate  and  beneficence  of  time :  I  seem  really  to  have 
(her  letters  and 's  and  your  admirable  com 
mittal  of  them  to  me  aiding)  made  her  emerge  and 
live  on,  endowed  her  with  a  kind  dim  sweet  im 
mortality  that  places  and  keeps  her — and  I  couldn't 
be  at  all  sure  that  I  was  doing  it ;  I  was  so  anxious 
and  worried  as  to  my  really  getting  the  effect  in 
the  right  way — with  tact  and  taste  and  without 
overstrain.  .  .  . 

I  am  counting  the  weeks  till  Peg  swims  into 
view  again — so  delightful  will  it  be  to  have  her 
near  and  easily  to  commune  with  her,  and  above 
all  to  get  from  her  all  that  detail  of  the  state  of 
the  case  about  you  all  that  I  so  constantly  yearn 
for  and  that  only  talk  can  give.  The  one  shade 
on  the  picture  is  my  fear  that  she  will  find  the  poor 
old  Uncle  much  more  handicapped  about  socially 
ministering  to  them  (two  young  women  with  large 
social  appetites)  than  she  is  perhaps  prepared  to 
find  me.  And  yet  after  all  she  probably  does  take 
in  that  I  have  had  to  cut  my  connections  with 
society  entirely.  Complications  and  efforts  with 


AET.  70     TO  MRS.  WILLIAM  JAMES          363 

people  floor  me,  anginally,  on  the  spot,  and  my 
state  is  that  of  living  every  hour  and  at  every  min 
ute  on  my  guard.  So  I  am  anything  but  the  centre 
of  an  attractive  circle — I  am  cut  down  to  the  barest 
inevitabilities,  and  occupied  really  more  than  in 
any  other  way  now  in  simply  saving  my  life.  How 
ever,  the  blest  child  was  witness  of  my  condition 
last  summer,  my  letters  have  probably  sufficiently 
reflected  it  since — and  I  am  really  on  a  better 
plane  than  when  she  was  last  with  me.  To  have 
her  with  me  is  a  true  support  and  joy,  and  I  some 
how  feel  that  with  her  admirable  capacity  to  be  in 
terested  in  the  near  and  the  characteristic,  what 
ever  these  may  be,  she  will  have  lots  of  pleasant 
and  informing  experience  and  contact  in  spite  of 
my  inability  to  "take  her  out"  or  to  entertain  com 
pany  for  her  at  home.  She  knows  this  and  she 
comes  in  all  her  indulgence  and  charity  and  gen 
erosity — for  the  sake  of  the  sweet  good  she  can 
herself  do  me.  And  I  rejoice  that  she  has  Mar 
garet  P.  with  her — who  will  help  and  solidify  and 
enrich  the  whole  scene.  No.  3  will  be  all  satis 
factorily  ready  for  them,  and  I  have  no  real  fear 
but  that  they  will  find  it  a  true  bower  of  ease.  The 
omens  and  auspices  seem  to  me  all  of  the  best. 

The  political  atmosphere  here  is  charged  to  ex 
plosion  as  it  has  never  been — what  is  to  happen 
no  man  knows ;  but  this  only  makes  it  a  more  thrill 
ing  and  spectacular  world.  The  tension  has  never 
been  so  great — but  it  will,  for  the  time  at  least, 
ease  down.  The  dread  of  violence  is  shared  all 
round.  I  am  finishing  this  rather  tiredly  by  night 
— I  couldn't  get  it  off  and  have  alas  missed  a  post. 
But  all  love. 

Your  affectionate 

H.  J. 


364       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      ion 


To  Arthur  Christopher  Benson. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

April  21st,  1914. 
My  dear  Arthur, 

What  a  delightful  thing  this  still  more  inter 
esting  extension  of  our  fortunate  talk!  I  can't  help 
being  glad  that  you  had  second  thoughts  (though 
your  first  affected  me  as  good  enough,  quite,  to 
need  no  better  ones,)  since  the  result  has  been  your 
rich  and  genial  letter.  The  only  thing  is  that  if 
your  first  thoughts  were  to  torment  (or  whatever) 
yourself,  these  supersessive  rather  torment  me — 
by  their  suggestion  that  there's  still  more  to  say 
yet — than  you  do  say :  as  when  you  remark  that  you 

ought  either  to  have  told  me  nothing  about 

or  to  have  told  me  all.  "All"  is  precisely  what  I 
should  have  liked  to  have  from  you — all  in  fact 
about  everything! — and  what  a  pity  we  can't  ap 
point  another  tea-hour  for  my  making  up  that  loss. 
You  clearly  live  in  these  years  so  much  more  in  the 
current  of  life  than  I  do  that  no  one  of  your  im 
pressions  would  have  failed  of  a  lively  interest  for 

me — and  the  more  we  had  been  able  to  talk  of 

and  his  current,  and  even  of and  his,  the  more 

I  should  have  felt  your  basis  of  friendship  in  every 
thing  and  the  generosity  of  your  relation  to  them. 
I  don't  think  we  see  anything,  about  our  friends, 
unless  we  see  all — so  far  as  in  us  lies;  and  there 
is  surely  no  care  we  can  so  take  for  them  as  to  turn 
our  mind  upon  them  liberally.  Don't  turn  yours 
too  much  upon  yourself  for  having  done  so.  The 
virtue  of  that  "ruder  jostle"  that  you  speak  of 
so  happily  is  exactly  that  it  shakes  out  more  aspects 
and  involves  more  impressions,  and  that  in  fine  you 
young  people  are  together  in  a  way  that  makes 
vivid  realities  spring  from  it — I  having  cognisance, 


AET.  71        TO  ARTHUR  C.  BENSON  365 

in  my  ancient  isolation,  I  well  know,  but  of  the 
more  or  less  edited,  revised,  not  to  say  expurgated, 
creature.  It's  inevitable — that  is — for  ancient 
isolation ;  but  you're  in  the  thick  of  history  and  the 
air  of  it  was  all  about  you,  and  the  records  of  it 
in  the  precious  casket  that  I  saw  you  give  in  charge 
to  the  porter.  So  with  that,  oh  man  of  action, 
perpetually  breaking  out  and  bristling  with  per 
formances  and  seeing  (and  feeling)  things  on  the 
field,  I  don't  know  what  you  mean  by  the  image 
of  the  toys  given  you  to  play  with  in  a  corner- 
charming  as  the  image  is.  It's  the  corner  I  con 
test — you're  in  the  middle  of  the  market-place,  and 
I  alter  the  figure  to  that  of  the  brilliant  juggler 
acquitting  himself  to  the  admiration  of  the  widest 
circle  amid  a  whirl  of  objects  projected  so  fast  that 
they  can  scarce  be  recognised,  but  that  as  they  fly 
round  your  head  one  somehow  guesses  to  be  books, 
and  one  of  which  in  fact  now  and  again  hits  that 
of  your  gaping  and  dazzled  and  all-faithful  old 
spectator  and  friend, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


366       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1914 


To  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward. 

The  following  is  one  of  a  large  number  of  letters  written 
in  answer  to  condolences  on  the  subject  of  the  mutilation 
of  his  portrait,  at  this  time  hanging  at  the  Royal  Acad 
emy,  by  a  militant  "suffragette":  who  had  apparently 
selected  it  for  attack  as  being  the  most  notable  and  valu 
able  canvas  in  the  exhibition. 

Dictated. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 

Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 
May  6th,  1914. 
Dear  and  Illustrious  Friend, 

I  blush  to  acknowledge  by  this  rude  method 
the  kindness  that  has  expressed  itself  on  your  part 
in  your  admirable  heroic  hand.  But  figure  me  as 
a  poor  thing  additionally  impaired  by  the  toma 
hawk  of  the  savage,  and  then  further  see  me  as 
breasting  a  wondrous  high  tide  of  postal  condolence 
in  this  doubly-damaged  state.  I  am  fairly  driven 
to  machinery  for  expedition's  sake.  And  let  me 
say  at  once  that  I  gather  the  sense  of  the  experts 
to  be  that  my  wounds  are  really  curable — such  rare 
secrets  for  restoration  can  now  be  brought  to  bear ! 
They  are  to  be  tried  at  any  rate  upon  Sargent's 
admirable  work,  and  I  am  taking  the  view  that 
they  must  be  effective.  As  for  our  discomfort 
from  ces  dames,  that  is  another  affair — and  which 
leaves  me  much  at  a  loss.  Surely  indeed  the  good 
ladies  who  claim  as  a  virtue  for  their  sex  that  they 
can  look  an  artistic  possession  of  that  quality  and 
rarity  well  in  the  face  only  to  be  moved  bloodily  to 
smash  it,  make  a  strange  appeal  to  the  confidence 
of  the  country  in  the  kind  of  character  they  shall 
bring  to  the  transaction  of  our  affairs.  Valuable 
to  us  that  species  of  intelligence!  Precious  to  us 


AET.  71    TO  MRS.  HUMPHRY  WARD         367 

that  degree  of  sensibility!  But  I  have  just  made 
these  reflections  in  very  much  these  terms  in  a  note 
to  dear  Anne  Ritchie.  Postal  pressure  induces  con 
versational  thrift!  However,  I  do  indeed  hope  to 
come  to  see  you  on  Thursday,  either  a  bit  early  or 
a  bit  late,  and  shall  then  throw  all  thrift  to  the 
winds  and  be  splendidly  extravagant!  I  dare  say 
I  shall  make  bold  to  bring  with  me  my  young  niece 
(my  brother  William's  only  daughter,)  who  is 
spending  a  couple  of  months  near  me  here;  and 
possibly  too  a  young  relative  of  her  own  who  is 
with  her.  Till  very  soon  then  at  the  worst. 
Yours  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Thomas  Sergeant  Perry. 

Dictated. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 

Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

May  17th,  1914. 
My  dear  Thomas, 

As  usual  I  groan  gratefully  under  the 
multiplication  of  your  bounties;  the  last  of  these 
in  particular  heaping  that  measure  up.  Pardon 
the  use  of  this  form  to  tell  you  so:  there  are  times 
when  I  faint  by  the  wayside,  and  can  then  only 
scramble  to  my  feet  by  the  aid  of  the  firm  secre 
tarial  crutch.  I  fall,  physically,  physiologically 
speaking,  into  holes  of  no  inconsiderable  depth, 
and  though  experience  shows  me  that  I  can  pretty 
well  always  count  on  scrambling  out  again,  my 
case  while  at  the  bottom  is  difficult,  and  it  is  from 
such  a  depth,  as  happens,  that  I  now  address  you: 
not  wanting  to  wait  till  I  am  above  ground  again, 
for  my  arrears,  on  those  emergences,  are  too  dis 
couraging  to  face.  Lilla  wrote  me  gentle  words 


368       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1914 

on  the  receipt  of  the  photograph  of  Sargent's  por 
trait,  and  now  you  have  poured  upon  the  wounds 
it  was  so  deplorably  to  receive  the  oil  of  your  com 
passion  and  sympathy.  I  gather  up  duly  and 
gratefully  those  rich  drops,  but  even  while  I  stow 
them  away  in  my  best  reliquary  am  able  to  tell  you 
that,  quite  extraordinarily,  the  consummate  re 
storer  has  been  able  to  make  the  injuries  good, 
desperate  though  they  at  first  seemed,  and  that  I 
am  assured  (this  by  Sargent  himself)  that  one 
would  never  guess  what  the  canvas  has  been 
through.  It  goes  back  at  once  to  the  Academy  to 
hang  upon  its  nail  again,  and  as  soon  as  it's  in  place 
I  shall  go  and  sneak  a  glance  at  it.  I  have  feared 
equally  till  now  seeing  it  either  wounded  or  doc 
tored — that  is  in  course  of  treatment.  Tell  Lilla, 
please,  for  her  interest,  that  the  job  will  owe  its 
success  apparently  very  much  to  the  newness  of  the 
paint,  the  whole  surface  more  plastic  to  the  man 
ipulator's  subtle  craft  than  if  it  had  hardened 
with  time,  after  the  manner  of  the  celebrated  old 
things  that  are  really  superior,  I  think,  by  their 
age  alone.  As  I  didn't  paint  the  picture  myself 
I  feel  just  as  free  to  admire  it  inordinately  as  any 
other  admirer  may  be;  and  those  are  the  terms  in 
which  I  express  myself.  I  won't  say,  my  dear 
Thomas,  much  more  today.  Don't  worry  about 
me  on  any  of  these  counts:  I  am  on  a  distinctly 
better  footing  than  this  time  a  year  ago,  and  have 
worried  through  upwards  of  a  twelve-month  with 
out  the  convenience,  by  which  I  mean  the  deathly 
complication,  of  having  to  see  a  Doctor.  If  I  can 
but  go  on  with  that  separation  there  will  be  hope 
for  me  yet.  I  take  you  to  be  now  in  villeggiatura 
and  preparing  for  the  irruption  of  your  Nursery 
— which,  however,  with  your  vast  safe  country 
side  to  spread  it  over  won't  probably  press  on  you 
to  smotheration.  I  remember  getting  the  sense 
that  Hancock  would  bear  much  peopling.  Plant 


AET.  71  TO  THOMAS  SERGEANT  PERRY  369 

it  here  and  there  with  my  affectionate  thought, 
ground  fine  and  scattered  freely,  and  believe  me 
yours  both  all  faithfully, 

HENKY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

The  allusions  in  the  following  are  to  a  motor-tour  of 
Mrs.  Wharton's  in  Algeria  and  Tunisia,  and  to  an  article 
by  her  in  the  Times  Literary  Supplement  on  "The  Criti 
cism  of  Fiction." 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 

Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

June  2nd,  1914. 
Dearest  Edith, 

Yes,  I  have  been  even  to  my  own  sense  too 
long  and  too  hideously  silent — small  wonder  that 
I  should  have  learned  from  dear  Mary  Cadwal 
therefore  (here  since  Saturday  night)  that  I  have 
seemed  to  you  not  less  miserably  so.  Yet  there 
has  been  all  the  while  a  certain  sublime  inevitability 
in  it — over  and  above  those  general  reactions  in 
favour  of  a  simplifying  and  softening  mutisme  that 
increase  with  my  increasing  age  and  infirmity.  I 
am  able  to  go  on  only  always  plus  doucement,  and 
when  you  are  off  on  different  phases  of  your  great 
world-swing  the  mere  side-wind  of  it  from  afar, 
across  continents  and  seas,  stirs  me  to  wonder 
ments  and  admirations,  sympathies,  curiosities,  in 
tensities  of  envy,  and  eke  thereby  of  humility,  which 
I  have  to  check  and  guard  against  for  their  strain 
on  my  damaged  organism.  The  relation  thus 
escapes  me — and  I  feel  it  must  so  escape  you, 
drunk  with  draughts  of  every  description  and  im 
mersed  in  visions  which  so  utterly  and  inevitably 
turn  their  back — or  turn  yours — on  what  one  might 
one's  self  have  de  mieux  to  vous  offrir.  The  idea 
of  tugging  at  you  to  make  you  look  round  there- 


370       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES 

fore — look  round  at  these  small  sordidries  and  poor 
nesses,  and  thereby  lose  the  very  finest  flash  of 
the  revelation  then  and  there  organised  for  you  or 
(the  great  thing!)  by  you  perchance:  that  affects 
me  ever  as  really  consonant  with  no  minimum  even 
of  modesty  or  discretion  on  one's  own  account — 
so  that,  in  fine,  I  have  simply  lain  stretched,  a  faith-, 
ful  old  veteran  slave,  upon  the  door-mat  of  your 
palace  of  adventure,  sufficiently  proud  to  give  the 
alarm  of  any  irruption,  should  I  catch  it,  but  other 
wise  waiting  till  you  should  emerge  again,  stepping 
over  my  prostrate  form  to  do  so.  That  gracious 
act  now  performed  by  you — since  I  gather  you 
to  be  back  in  Paris  by  this  speaking — I  get  up,  as 
you  see,  to  wish  you  the  most  affectionate  and 
devoted  welcome  home  and  tell  you  that  I  believe 
myself  to  have  "kept"  in  quite  a  sound  and  decent 
way,  in  the  domestic  ice -chest  of  your  absence.  I 
mix  my  metaphors  a  little,  comme  tou jours  (or 
rather  comme  jamais!)  but  the  great  thing  is  to 
feel  you  really  within  hail  again  and  in  this  air  of 
my  own  poor  little  world,  which  isn't  for  me  the 
non-conductor  (that's  the  real  hitch  when  you're 
"off")  of  that  of  your  great  globe-life.  I  won't 
try  to  ask  you  of  this  last  glory  now — for,  though 
the  temperature  of  the  ice-chest  itself  has  naturally 
risen  with  your  nearer  approximation,  I  still  shall 
keep  long  enough,  I  trust,  to  sit  at  your  knee  in 
some  peaceful  nook  here  and  gather  in  the  won 
drous  tale.  I  have  had  echoes — even,  in  very  faint 
and  vague  form,  that  of  the  burglarious  attempt 
upon  you  in  the  anonymous  oriental  city  (vague 
ness  does  possess  me!) — but  by  the  time  my  sound 
of  indignant  participation  would  have  reached  you 
I  took  up  my  Lit.  Supp.  to  find  you  in  such  force 
over  the  subject  you  there  treated,  on  that  so  happy 
occasion,  that  the  beautiful  firmness  and  "clarity," 
even  if  not  charity,  of  your  nerves  and  tone  clearly 
gave  the  lie  to  any  fear  I  should  entertain  for  the 


AET.  71  TO  MRS.  WHARTON  371 

effect  of  your  annoyance.  I  greatly  admired  by 
the  same  token  the  fine  strain  of  that  critical  voice 
from  out  the  path  of  shade  projected  upon  the 
desert  sand,  as  I  suppose,  by  the  silhouette  of  your 
camel.  Beautifully  said,  thought,  felt,  inimitably 
jete,  the  paper  has  excited  great  attention  and 
admiration  here — and  is  probably  doing  an  amount 
of  missionary  work  in  savage  breasts  that  we  shall 
yet  have  some  comparatively  rude  or  ingenuous 
betrayal  of.  I  do  notice  that  the  flow  of  the  little 
impaydbles  reviews  meanders  on — but  enfin  ne 
desesperons  pas.  .  .  .  But  oh  dear,  I  want  to  see 
you  about  everything — and  am  yours  all  affec 
tionately  and  not  in  the  least  patiently, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  William  Roughead,  W.  S. 

This  and  the  next  letter  refer  to  further  gifts  in  the 
literature  of  crime.  Lord  Justice  Clerk  Macqueen  of 
Braxfield  was  of  course  the  original  of  Stevenson's  Weir 
of  Hermiston. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

June  10th,  1914. 
My  dear  Roughead, 

( Let  me  take  a  flying  leap  across  the  formal 
barrier!)  You  are  the  most  munificent  of  men  as 
well  as  the  most  ingenious  of  writers,  and  my 
modest  library  will  have  been  extremely  enriched 
by  you  in  a  department  in  which  it  has  been  weak 
out  of  all  proportion  to  the  yearning  curiosity  of 
its  owner.  I  greatly  appreciate  your  gift  to  me 
of  the  so  complete  and  pictorial  Blandy  volume— 
dreadfully  informing  as  it  is  in  the  whole  contem 
porary  connection — the  documents  are  such  good 
reporting  that  they  make  the  manners  and  the  tone, 
the  human  and  social  note,  live  after  a  fashion 


372       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1914 

beside  which  our  own  general  exhibition  becomes 
more  soothing  to  my  soul.  Your  summary  of  the 
Blandy  trial  strikes  me  afresh  as  an  admirable  piece 
of  foreshortening  (of  the  larger  quantities — now 
that  these  are  presented.)  But  how  very  good  the 
reporting  of  cases  appears  to  have  been  capable 
of  being  all  the  same,  in  those  pre-shorthand  days. 
I  find  your  Braxfield  a  fine  vivid  thing — and  the 
pleasure  of  sense  over  the  park-like  page  of  the 
Juridical  is  a  satisfaction  by  itself;  but  I  confess 
your  hero  most  interests  by  the  fact  that  he  so  in 
terested  R.  L.  S.,  incurable  yearning  Scot  that 
Louis  was.  I  am  rather  easily  sated,  in  the  direct 
way,  with  the  mainly  "broad"  and  monotonously 
massive  characters  of  that  type,  uncouth  of  sound, 
and  with  their  tendency  to  be  almost  stupidly  sane. 
History  never  does  them — never  has,  I  think — in 
adequate  justice  (you  must  help  her  to  that  bland- 
ness  here;)  and  it's  all  right  and  there  they  numer 
ously  and  soundly  and  heavily  were  and  are.  But 
they  but  renew,  ever  (when  reproduced,)  my  per 
sonal  appetite — by  reaction — for  the  handlers  of 
the  fiddle-string  and  the  fumblers  for  the  essence. 
Such  are  my  more  natural  sneaking  affinities.  But 
keep  on  with  them  all,  please — and  continue  to 
beckon  me  along  the  gallery  that  I  can't  tread 
alone  and  where,  by  your  leave,  I  link  my  arm  con- 
fraternally  in  yours:  the  gallery  of  sinister  per 
spective  just  stretches  in  this  manner  straight  away. 
I  am  delighted  the  photograph  is  to  receive  such 
honour — the  original  (I  don't  mean  me,  but  Sar 
gent's  improvement  on  me)  is  really  magnificent, 
and  I,  unimproved,  am  yours  all  truly, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


AET.  71  TO  WILLIAM  ROUGHEAD,  W.S.    373 


To  WilUam  Roughead,  W.  S. 

Miss  Madeleine  Hamilton  Smith,  to  whom  the  follow 
ing  refers,  was  tried  on  a  charge  of  poisoning  in  1857. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 

Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

June  16th,  1914. 
My  dear  Roughead, 

Your  offering  is  a  precious  thing  and  I  am 
touched  by  it,  but  I  am  also  alarmed  for  the  effect 
on  your  fortunes,  your  future,  on  those  (and  that) 
who  (and  which)  may,  as  it  were,  depend  on  you, 
of  these  gorgeous  generosities  of  munificence.  The 
admirable  Report  is,  as  I  conceive,  a  high  rarity 
and  treasure,  and  I  feel  as  if  in  accepting  it  I  were 
snatching  the  bread  perhaps  from  the  lips  of  un 
known  generations.  Well,  I  gratefully  bow  my 
head,  but  only  on  condition  that  it  shall  revert,  the 
important  object  and  alienated  heirloom,  to  the 
estate  of  my  benefactor  on  my  demise.  A  strange 
and  fortunate  thing  has  happened — your  packet 
and  letter  found  me  this  a.m.  in  the  grip  of  an 
attack  of  gout  (the  first  for  three  or  four  years, 
and  apparently  not  destined  to  be  very  bad,  with 
an  admirable  remedy  that  I  possess  at  once  re 
sorted  to.)  So  I  have  been  reclining  at  peace  for 
most  of  the  day  with  my  foot  up  and  my  eyes  at 
tached  to  the  prodigious  Madeleine.  I  have  read 
your  volume  straight  through,  with  the  extremity 
of  interest  and  wonder.  It  represents  indeed  the 
type,  perfect  case,  with  nothing  to  be  taken  from 
it  or  added,  and  with  the  beauty  that  she  precisely 
didn't  squalidly  suffer,  but  lived  on  to  admire  with 
the  rest  of  us,  for  so  many  years,  the  rare  work 
of  art  with  which  she  had  'been  the  means  of  en 
riching  humanity.  With  what  complacency  must 
she  not  have  regarded  it,  through  the  long  back- 


374       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1914 

ward  vista,  during  the  time  (now  twenty  years 
ago)  when  I  used  to  hear  of  her  as,  married  and 
considered,  after  a  long  period  in  Australia,  the 
near  neighbour,  in  Onslow  Gardens,  of  my  old 
friends  the  Lyon  Playfairs.  They  didn't  know  or 
see  her  (beyond  the  fact  of  her  being  there,)  but 
they  tantalized  me,  because  if  it  then  made  me  very, 
very  old  it  now  piles  Ossa  upon  Pelion  for  me  that 
I  remember  perfectly  her  trial  during  its  actuality, 
and  how  it  used  to  come  to  us  every  day  in  the 
Times,  at  Boulogne,  where  I  was  then  with  my 
parents,  and  how  they  followed  and  discussed  it 
in  suspense  and  how  I  can  still  see  the  queer  look 
of  the  "not  proven,"  seen  for  the  first  time,  on  the 
printed  page  of  the  newspaper.  I  stand  again 
with  it,  on  the  summer  afternoon — a  boy  of  14 — 
in  the  open  window  over  the  Rue  Neuve  Chaussee 
where  I  read  it.  Only  I  didn't  know  then  of  its — 
the  case's — perfect  beauty  and  distinction,  as  you 
say.  A  singularly  fine  thing  is  this  report  indeed 
— and  a  very  magnificent  the  defence.  She  was 
truly  a  portentous  young  person,  with  the  con 
ditions  of  the  whole  thing  throwing  it  into  such 
extraordinary  relief,  and  yet  I  wonder  all  the  same 
at  the  verdict  in  the  face  of  the  so  vividly  attested, 
and  so  fully  and  so  horribly,  sufferings  of  her 
victim.  It's  astonishing  that  the  evidence  of  what 
he  went  through  that  last  night  didn't  do  for  her. 
And  what  a  pity  she  was  almost  of  the  pre-photo- 
graphic  age — I  would  give  so  much  for  a  veracious 
portrait  of  her  then  face.  To  all  of  which  abso 
lutely  inevitable  acknowledgment  you  are  not  to 
dream,  please,  of  responding  by  a  single  word.  I 
shall  take,  I  foresee,  the  liveliest  interest  in  the 
literary  forger-man.  How  can  we  be  sufficiently 
thankful  for  these  charming  breaks  in  the  sinister 
perspective?  I  rest  my  telescope  on  your  shoulder 
and  am  yours  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


AET.  71      TO  MRS.  ALFRED  SUTRO  375 


To  Mrs.  'Alfred  Sutro. 

"L'Histoire"  is  George  Sand's  Histoire  de  ma  Vie,  sent 
by  H.  J.  to  Mrs.  Sutro  in  preparation  for  her  proposed 
visit  to  Nohant. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

July  28th,  1914. 
Dear  Mrs.  Sutro, 

I  rejoice  to  hear,  by  your  liberal  letter,  that 
the  pile  of  books  held  together  and  have  appeared, 
on  reaching  you,  to  make  a  decent  show.  Also 
I'm  very  glad  that  it's  come  in  your  way  to  have 
a  look  at  Nohant — though  I  confess  that  I  ask  my 
self  what  effect  the  vulgarization  of  places,  "scienti 
fically"  speaking,  by  free  and  easy  (and  incessant) 
motor  approach  may  be  having  on  their  once  com 
paratively  sequestered  genius.  Well,  that  is  ex 
actly  what  you  will  tell  me  after  you  have  constate 
the  phenomenon  in  this  almost  best  of  all  cases  for 
observing  it.  For  Nohant  was  so  shy  and  remote 
— and  Nohant  must  be  now  (handed  over  to  the 
State  and  the  Public  as  their  property)  so  very 
much  to  the  fore.  Do  read  L'Histoire  at  any  rate 
first — that  is  indispensable,  and  the  lecture  of  a 
facility!  Yes,  I  am  liking  it  very  much  here  in 
these  beautiful  midsummer  coolnesses  —  though 
wishing  we  weren't  so  losing  our  Bloom  of  mystery 
by  the  multitudinous  assault.  However,  I  hug 
whatever  provincial  privacy  we  may  still  pretend 
to  at  this  hour  of  public  uproar — so  very  horrible 
is  the  bear-garden  of  the  outer  world  to  my  sense, 
under  these  threatened  convulsions.  I  cravenly 
avert  my  eyes  and  stop  my  ears — scarcely  turning 
round  even  for  a  look  at  the  Caillaux  family.  What 
a  family  and  what  a  trial — and  what  a  suggestion 
for  us,  of  complacent  self -comparisons !  I  clutch 
at  these  hungrily — in  the  great  deficiency  of  other 
sources  of  any  sort  of  assurance  for  us.  May  we 


S76       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1914 

muddle  through  even  now,  though  I  almost  wonder 
if  we  deserve  to!  That  doubt  is  why  I  bury  my 
nose  in  my  rose-trees  and  my  inkpot.  What  a 
judge  of  the  play  you  will  be  becoming,  with  the 
rate  at  which  Alfred  and  his  typist  keep  you  sup 
plied!  Be  sure  to  see  the  little  Nohant  domestic 
theatre,  by  the  way — and  judge  what  a  part  it 
played  in  that  discomfortable  house.  I  long  for 
the  autumn  "run"  when  you  will  tell  me  all  your 
impressions,  and  am  yours  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Sir  Claude  Phillips. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

July  31st,  1914. 
My  dear  Claude, 

I  can't  not  thank  you  on  the  spot  for  your 
so  interesting  and  moving  letter,  which  reflects  to 
me,  relievingly  in  a  manner,  all  the  horror  and  dis 
may  in  which  I  sit  here  alone.  I  mean  that  it  eases 
off  the  appalled  sense  a  little  to  share  that  sickness 
with  a  fellow-victim  and  be  able  to  say  a  little  of 
what  presses  on  one.  What  one  first*  feels  one's 
self  uttering,  no  doubt,  is  but  the  intense  unthink- 
ability  of  anything  so  blank  and  so  infamous  in  an 
age  that  we  have  been  living  in  and  taking  for  our 
own  as  if  it  were  of  a  high  refinement  of  civilisa 
tion — in  spite  of  all  conscious  incongruities;  find 
ing  it  after  all  carrying  this  abomination  in  its 
blood,  finding  this  to  have  been  what  it  meant  all 
the  while,  is  like  suddenly  having  to  recognise  in 
one's  family  circle  or  group  of  best  friends  a  band 
of  murderers,  swindlers  and  villains — it's  just  a 
similar  shock.  It  makes  us  wonder  whom  in  the 
world  we  are  now  to  live  with  then — and  even  if 
with  everything  publicly  and  internationally  so 
given  away  we  can  live,  or  want  to  live,  at  all. 


AET.  71     TO  SIR  CLAUDE  PHILLIPS          377 

Very  hideous  to  me  is  the  behaviour  of  that  for 
sworn  old  pastor  of  his  people,  the  Austrian  Em 
peror,  of  whom,  so  eprouve  and  so  venerable,  one 
had  supposed  better  things  than  so  interested  and 
so  cynical  a  chucking  to  the  winds  of  all  moral 
responsibility.  Infamous  seem  to  me  in  such  a 
light  all  the  active  great  ones  of  the  earth,  active 
for  evil,  in  our  time  (to  speak  only  of  that,)  from 
the  monstrous  Bismarck  down!  But  il  s'agit  bien 
to  protest  in  face  of  such  a  world — one  can  only 
possess  one's  soul  in  such  dignity  as  may  be  pre 
cariously  achievable.  Almost  the  worst  thing  is 
that  the  dreadfulness,  all  of  it,  may  become  inter 
esting — to  the  blight  and  ruin  of  our  poor  dear 
old  cherished  source  of  interest,  and  in  spite  of 
one's  resentment  at  having  to  live  in  such  a  way. 
With  it  all  too  is  indeed  the  terrible  sense  that  the 
people  of  this  country  may  well — by  some  awful 
brutal  justice — be  going  to  get  something  bad 
for  the  exhibition  that  has  gone  on  so  long  of  their 
huge  materialized  stupidity  and  vulgarity.  I  mean 
the  enormous  national  sacrifice  to  insensate  amuse 
ment,  without  a  redeeming  idea  or  a  generous  pas 
sion,  that  has  kept  making  one  ask  one's  self,  from 
so  far  back,  how  such  grossness  and  folly  and  bla- 
tancy  could  possibly  not  be  in  the  long  run  to  be 
paid  for.  The  rate  at  which  we  may  witness  the 
paying  may  be  prodigious — and  then  no  doubt  one 
will  pityingly  and  wretchedly  feel  that  the  inten 
tion,  after  all,  was  never  so  bad — only  the  stupidity 
constitutional  and  fatal.  That  is  truly  the  dismal 
reflection,  and  on  which  you  touch,  that  if  anything 
very  bad  does  happen  to  the  country,  there  isn't 
anything  like  the  French  intelligence  to  react— 
with  the  flannelled  fool  at  the  wicket,  the  muddied 
oaf  and  tutti  quanti,  representing  so  much  of  our 
preferred  intelligence.  However,  let  me  pull  up 
with  the  thought  that  when  I  am  reduced  to — or 
have  come  to  —  quoting  Kipling  for  argument, 


378       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1914 

there  may  be  something  the  matter  with  my  con 
clusion.  One  can  but  so  distressfully  wait  and  so 
wonderingly  watch. 

I  am  sorry  to  hear  that  the  great  London  revelry 
and  devilry  (even  if  you  have  had  more  of  the 
side-wind  than  of  the  current  itself)  has  left  you 
so  consciously  spent  and  sore.  You  can  do  with 
so  much  more  of  the  current,  at  any  rate,  than  I 
have  ever  been  able  to,  that  it  affects  me  as  sad  and 
wrong  that  that  of  itself  shouldn't  be  something  of 
a  guarantee.  But  if  there  must  be  more  drawing 
together  perhaps  we  shall  blessedly  find  that  we 
can  all  more  help  each  other.  I  quite  see  your  point 
in  taking  either  the  grand  or  the  petty  tour  just 
now  not  at  all  for  granted,  and  greatly  hope  that 
if  you  circulate  in  this  country  some  fitful  tide  will 
bear  you  to  this  quarter — though  I  confess  that 
when  I  think  of  the  comparative  public  entertain 
ment  on  which  you  would  so  have  to  throw  yourself 
I  blush  to  beckon  you  on.  I  find  myself  quite 
offensively  complacent  in  the  conditions  about  the 
established  simplicity  of  my  own  life  —  I've  not 
"done"  anything  for  so  long,  and  have  been  given 
over  to  such  spareness  and  bareness,  that  I  look 
privation  in  the  face  as  a  very  familiar  friend. 
Yours  all  faithfully  and  fearfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


VIII 

THE  WAR 
(1914-1916) 

THE  letters  that  follow  tell  the  story  of  Henry 
James's  life  during  the  first  year  of  the  war  in 
words  that  make  all  others  superfluous.  The  tide 
of  emotion  on  which  he  was  lifted  up  and  carried 
forward  was  such  as  he  only  could  describe;  and 
week  by  week,  in  scores  of  letters  to  friends  in 
England  and  France  and  America,  he  uttered  him 
self  on  behalf  of  those  who  felt  as  he  did,  but  who 
had  no  language  worthy  of  the  time.  To  all  who 
listened  to  him  in  those  days  it  must  have  seemed 
that  he  gave  us  what  we  lacked — a  voice;  there 
was  a  trumpet  note  in  it  that  was  heard  nowhere 
else  and  that  alone  rose  to  the  height  of  the  truth. 
For  a  while  it  was  as  though  the  burden  of  age  had 
slipped  from  him;  he  lived  in  the  lives  of  all  who 
were  acting  and  suffering — especially  of  the  young, 
who  acted  and  suffered  most.  His  spiritual  vigour 
bore  a  strain  that  was  the  greater  by  the  whole 
weight  of  his  towering  imagination;  but  the  time 
came  at  last  when  his  bodily  endurance  failed.  He 
died  resolutely  confident  of  the  victory  that  was 
still  so  far  off. 

He  was  at  Rye  when  the  war  broke  out,  but 
he  very  soon  found  the  peace  of  the  country  in 
tolerable.  He  came  to  London,  to  be  within  the 
current  of  events,  and  remained  there  almost  un 
interruptedly  till  the  end.  His  days  were  filled 

379 


380     LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES     ww-ie 

with  many  interests,  chief  of  which  was  the  oppor 
tunity  of  talk  with  wounded  soldiers — in  hospital, 
at  the  houses  of  friends,  in  the  streets  as  he  walked; 
wherever  he  met  them  the  sight  irresistibly  drew 
forth  his  sympathy  and  understanding  and  admira 
tion.  Close  at  hand,  in  Chelsea,  there  was  a  centre 
for  the  entertainment  of  refugees  from  Belgium, 
and  for  these  he  was  active  in  charity.  Another 
cause  in  which  he  was  much  engaged,  and  to  which 
he  contributed  help  of  more  kinds  than  one,  was 
that  of  the  American  Volunteer  Motor- Ambulance 
corps  in  France,  organised  by  the  son  of  his  old 
friend  Charles  Eliot  Norton.  Every  contact  with 
the  meaning  of  war,  which  no  hour  could  fail  to 
bring,  gave  an  almost  overpowering  surge  of  im 
pressions,  some  of  which  passed  into  a  series  of 
essays,  written  for  different  charitable  purposes 
and  now  collected  in  Within  the  Rim  (1919). 
Even  beyond  all  this  he  was  able  to  give  a  certain 
amount  of  qnergy  to  other  literary  work;  and  in 
deed  he  found  it  essential  to  cling  so  far  as  might 
be  to  the  steadying  continuity  of  creation.  The 
Ivory  Tower  had  to  be  laid  aside — it  was  impossible 
to  believe  any  longer  in  a  modern  fiction,  supposed 
to  represent  the  life  of  the  day,  which  the  great 
catastrophe  had  so  belied;  but  he  took  up  The 
Sense  of  the  Past  again,  the  fantasmal  story  he  had 
abandoned  for  its  difficulty  in  1900 — finding  its 
unreality  now  remote  enough  to  be  beyond  the 
reach  of  the  war.  He  also  began  a  third  volume 
of  reminiscences,  The  Middle  Years.  Work  of  one 
kind  or  another  was  pushed  forward  with  increas 
ing  effort  through  the  summer  of  1915,  the  last  of 
his  writing  being  the  introduction  to  the  Letters 
from  America  of  Rupert  Brooke.  He  finished 
this,  and  spent  the  eve  of  his  last  illness,  Decem 
ber  1st,  in  turning  over  the  pages  of  The  Sense  of 
the  Past,  intending  to  go  on  with  it  the  next 
morning. 


1914-16 


THE  WAR  381 


Meanwhile,  as  everyone  knows,  his  passionate 
loyalty  to  the  cause  of  the  Allies  had  brought  him 
to  take  a  step  which  in  all  but  forty  years  of  life  in 
England  he  had  never  before  contemplated.  On 
July  26th,  1915,  he  became  naturalised  as  a  British 
subject.  The  letters  now  published  give  the  fullest 
expression  to  his  motives;  it  has  seemed  right  to  let 
them  do  so,  mingled  as  his  motives  were  with  many 
strains,  some  of  them  reactions  of  disappointment 
over  the  official  attitude  of  his  native  country  at 
that  time.  If  he  had  lived  to  see  America  join 
the  Allies  he  would  have  had  the  deepest  joy  of 
his  life;  and  perhaps  it  is  worth  mentioning  that 
his  relations  with  the  American  Embassy  in  Lon 
don  had  never  been  so  close  and  friendly  as  they 
became  during  those  last  months. 

On  the  morning  of  December  2nd  he  had  a 
stroke,  presently  followed  by  another,  from  which 
he  rallied  at  first,  but  which  bore  him  down  after 
not  many  days.  His  sister-in-law,  with  her  eldest 
son  and  daughter,  came  at  once  from  America  to 
be  with  him,  and  he  was  able  to  enjoy  their  com 
pany.  He  was  pleased,  too,  by  a  sign  of  welcome 
offered  to  him  in  his  new  citizenship.  Among  the 
New  Year  honours  there  was  announced  the  award 
to  him  of  the  Order  of  Merit,  and  the  insignia  were 
brought  to  his  bedside  by  Lord  Bryce,  a  friend  of 
many  years.  Through  the  following  weeks  he 
gradually  sank;  he  died  on  February  28th,  1916, 
within  two  months  of  his  seventy-third  birthday. 
His  body  was  cremated,  and  the  funeral  service 
held  at  Chelsea  Old  Church  on  March  3rd,  a  few 
yards  from  his  own  door  on  the  quiet  river-side. 


To  Howard  Sturgis. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
[August  4th,  1914.] 

Dearly  beloved  Howard! 

I  think  one  of  the  reasons  is  that  I  have 
so  allowed  silence  and  separation  to  accumulate — 
the  effort  of  breaking  through  the  mass  becomes 
in  that  case  so  formidable;  the  mass  being  thus 
the  monstrous  mountain  that  blocks  up  the  fair 
scene  and  that  one  has  to  explain  away.  ^  I  am 
engaged  in  that  effort  at  the  present  moment, 
however — I  am  breaking  through  the  mass,  boring 
through  the  mountain,  I  feel,  as  I  put  pen  to 
paper — and  this,  too,  though  I  don't,  though  I 
shan't,  though  I  can't  particularly  "explain."  And 
why  should  I  treat  you  at  this  time  of  day — or,  to 
speak  literally,  of  night — as  if  you  had  begun  sud 
denly  not  to  be  able  to  understand  without  a  vulgar 
demonstration  on  the  blackboard?  As  I  should 
never  dream  of  resorting  to  that  mode  of  public 
proof  that  I  tenderly  and  unabatedly  love  you,  so 
why  should  I  think  it  necessary  to  chalk  it  up  there 
that  there  was,  all  those  strange  weeks  and  months 
during  which  I  made  you  no  sign,  an  absolute  in 
evitability  in  the  graceless  appearance?  I  call 
them  strange  because  of  the  unnatural  face  that 
they  wear  to  me  now — but  they  had  at  the  time 
the  deadliest  familiar  look ;  the  look  of  all  the  other 
parts  of  life  that  one  was  giving  up  and  doing 

382 


AET.  71         TO  HOWARD  STTIRGIS  383 

without — even  if  it  didn't  resemble  them  in  their 
comparative  dismissability.  From  them  I  learned 
perforce  at  last  to  avert  my  head,  whereas  there 
wasn't  a  moment  of  the  long  stretch  during  which 
I  never  either  wrote  or  wired  you  for  generous 
leave  to  come  down  to  tea  or  dinner  or  both,  there 
wasn't  a  moment  when  I  hadn't,  from  Chelsea  to 
Windsor,  my  eyes  fondly  fixed  on  you.  You 
seemed  rather  to  go  out  of  their  reach  when  I  was 
placed  in  some  pretended  assurance  that  you  had 
left  Qu'acre  for  Scotland,  but  now  that  I  hear,  by 
some  equally  vague  voice  of  the  air,  that  you  are 
still  at  home — and  this  appears  more  confirmed  to 
me — I  have  you  intensely  before  me  again;  yes, 
and  so  vividly  that  I  even  make  you  out  as  some 
times  looking  at  me.  I  think  in  fact  it's  a  good 
deal  the  magnanimous  sadness  I  so  catch  from 
you  that  makes  me  feel  to-night  how  little  longer 
I  can  bear  my  own  black  air  of  having  fallen  away 
while  I  yet  really  and  intensely  stick,  and  therefore 
get  on  the  way  to  you  again,  so  far  as  this  will 
take  me. 

It  will  soon  be  three  weeks  since  I  came  back 
here  from  Chelsea — which  I  was  capable  of  leav 
ing,  yes,  without  having  made  you  a  sign.  It  was 
a  case,  dearest  Howard,  of  the  essential  inevita 
bility — the  mark  you  yourself  must  in  these  days 
so  recognise  in  all  your  omissions  and  frustrations, 
all  your  lapses  from  the  mortal  act.  Even  you 
must  have  to  know  them  so  on  your  own  part — 
and  you  must  feel  them  just  to  have  to  be  as  they 
are  (and  as  you  are.)  That  was  the  way  the  like 
things  had  to  be  with  me — as  I  was;  and  it's  to 
insult  our  long  and  perfect  understanding  not  to 
feel  that  you  have  treasures  of  the  truest  interpre 
tation  of  everything  whatever  in  our  common  con 
dition.  Oh  how  I  so  want  at  last,  all  the  same,  to 
have  a  direct  word  or  two  from  your  blest  self  on 
your  own  share  of  that  community!  I  have  ques- 


384       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1914 

tioned  whomsoever  I  could  in  any  faint  degree 
suppose  worth  questioning  on  this  score  of  the 
show  you  are  making  —  but  of  course,  I  admit, 
elicited  no  word  of  any  real  value.  Five  words  of 
your  own  articulation — by  which  I  mean  scratches 
of  your  own  pen  —  will  go  further  with  me  than 
any  amount  of  roundabout  twaddle.  I  hear  of 
predatory  loose  women  quartered  upon  you  again 
— and  I  groan  in  my  far-off  pain;  especially  when 
I  reflect  that  their  fatuous  account  would  be  that 
you  were  in  health  and  joy  quite  exactly  by  reason 
of  them.  I  think  the  great  public  blackness  most 
of  all  makes  me  send  out  this  signal  to  you — as  if 
I  were  lighting  the  twinkle  of  a  taper  to  set  over 
against  you  in  my  window. 

August  5th.  The  taper  went  out  last  night,  and 
I  am  afraid  I  now  kindle  it  again  to  a  very  feeble 
ray — for  it's  vain  to  try  to  talk  as  if  one  weren't 
living  in  a  nightmare  of  the  deepest  dye.  How 
can  what  is  going  on  not  be  to  one  as  a  huge  horror 
of  blackness?  Of  course  that  is  what  it  is  to  you, 
dearest  Howard,  even  as  it  is  to  your  infinitely 
sickened  inditer  of  these  lines.  The  plunge  of 
civilization  into  this  abyss  of  blood  and  darkness 
by  the  wanton  feat  of  those  two  infamous  auto 
crats  is  a  thing  that  so  gives  away  the  whole  long 
age  during  which  we  have  supposed  the  world  to 
be,  with  whatever  abatement,  gradually  bettering, 
that  to  have  to  take  it  all  now  for  what  the  treach 
erous  years  were  all  the  while  really  making  for 
and  meaning  is  too  tragic  for  any  words.  But 
one's  reflections  don't  really  bear  being  uttered — 
at  least  we  each  make  them  enough  for  our  indi 
vidual  selves  and  I  didn't  mean  to  smother  you 
under  mine  in  addition  to  your  own.  .  .  . 

But  good-night  again — my  lamp  now  is  snuffed 
out.  Have  I  mentioned  to  you  that  I  am  not  here 
alone? — having  with  me  my  niece  Peggy  and  her 
younger  brother — both  "caught"  for  the  time,  in 


AET.  71         TO  HOWARD  STURGIS  385 

a  manner;  though  willing,  even  glad,  as  well  as 
able,  to  bear  their  poor  old  appalled  Uncle  the 
kindest  company  —  very  much  the  same  sort  as 
William  bears  you.  I  embrace  you,  and  him  too, 
and  am  ever  your  faithfullest  old 

H.  J. 


To  Henry  James,  junior. 

Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

August  6th,  1914. 
Dearest  Harry, 

.  .  .  Everything  is  of  the  last  abnormalism 
now,  and  no  convulsion,  no  historic  event  of  any 
such  immensity  can  ever  have  taken  place  in  such 
a  turn-over  of  a  few  hours  and  with  such  a  meas 
ureless  rush  —  the  whole  thing  being,  in  other 
words,  such  an  unprecedented  combination  of  size 
and  suddenness.  There  has  never  surely,  since 
the  world  began,  been  any  suddenness  so  big,  so 
instantly  mobilised,  any  more  than  there  has  been 
an  equal  enormity  so  sudden  (if,  after  all,  that  can 
be  called  sudden,  or  more  than  comparatively  so, 
which,  it  is  now  clearly  visible,  had  been  brewing 
in  the  councils  of  the  two  awful  Kaisers  from  a 
good  while  back.)  The  entrance  of  this  country 
into  the  fray  has  been  supremely  inevitable — never 
doubt  for  an  instant  of  that;  up  to  a  few  short  days 
ago  she  was  still  multiplying  herself  over  Europe, 
in  the  magnificent  energy  and  pertinacity  of  Ed 
ward  Grey,  for  peace,  and  nothing  but  peace,  in 
any  way  in  which  he  could  by  any  effort  or  any 
service  help  to  preserve  it;  and  has  now  only  been 
beaten  by  what  one  can  only  call  the  huge  im 
morality,  the  deep  conspiracy  for  violence,  for 
violence  and  wrong,  of  the  Austrian  and  the  Ger- 


386       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       mi 

man  Emperors.  Till  the  solemnly  guaranteed 
neutrality  of  Belgium  was  three  or  four  days  ago 
deliberately  violated  by  Germany,  in  defiance  of 
every  right,  in  her  ferocious  push  to  get  at  France 
by  that  least  fortified  way,  we  still  hung  in  the 
balance  here;  but  with  that  no  "balance"  was  any 
longer  possible,  and  the  impulse  to  participate  to 
the  utmost  in  resistance  and  redress  became  as 
unanimous  and  as  sweeping  a  thing  in  the  House 
of  Commons  and  throughout  the  land  as  it  is  possi 
ble  to  conceive.  That  is  the  one  light,  as  one  may 
call  it,  in  so  much  sickening  blackness — that  in  an 
hour,  here,  all  breaches  instantly  healed,  all  divi 
sions  dropped,  the  Irish  dissension,  on  which 
Germany  had  so  clearly  counted,  dried  up  in  a 
night — so  that  there  is  at  once  the  most  striking 
and  interesting  spectacle  of  united  purpose.  For 
myself,  I  draw  a  long  breath  that  we  are  not  to 
have  failed  France  or  shirked  any  shadow  of  a 
single  one  of  the  implications  of  the  Entente;  for 
the  reason  that  we  go  in  only  under  the  last  com 
pulsion,  and  with  cleaner  hands  than  we  have  ever 
had,  I  think,  in  any  such  matter  since  such  matters 
were.  (You  see  how  I  talk  of  "we"  and  "our" — 
which  is  so  absolutely  instinctive  and  irresistible 
with  me  that  I  should  feel  quite  abject  if  I  didn't!) 
However  I  don't  want,  for  today,  to  disquisitionise 
on  this  great  public  trouble,  but  only  to  give  you 
our  personal  news  in  the  midst  of  it — for  it's  aston 
ishing  in  how  few  days  we  have  jumped  into  the 
sense  of  being  in  the  midst  of  it.  England  and  the 
Continent  are  at  the  present  hour  full  of  hung 
up  and  stranded  Americans — those  unable  to  get 
home  and  waiting  for  some  re-establishment  of 
violently  interrupted  traffic.  .  .  .  But  good-bye, 
dearest  Harry,  now.  It's  a  great  blessing  to  be 
able  to  write  you  under  this  aid  to  lucidity — it's  in 
fact  everything,  so  I  shall  keep  at  it.  I  hope  the 
American  receipt  of  news  is  getting  organised  on 


AKT.  71    TO  HENRY  JAMES,  JUNIOR         387 

the  strong  and  sound  lines  it  should  be.  Send  this, 
of  course,  please,  as  soon  as  you  can  to  your  Mother 
and  believe  me  your  devotedest  old  Uncle, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  Alfred  Sutro. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

August  8th,  1914. 

Dear  Mrs.  Sutro, 

I  have  your  good  letter,  but  how  impossible 
it  seems  to  speak  of  anything  before  one  speaks  of 
the  tremendous  public  matter — and  then  how  im 
possible  to  speak  of  anything  after!  But  here  goes 
for  poor  dear  old  George  Sand  and  her  ancient 
prattle  (heaven  forgive  me!)  to  the  extent  that  of 
course  that  autobiography  (it  is  a  nice  old  set!) 
does  in  a  manner  notify  one  that  it's  going  to  be 
frank  and  copious,  veracious  and  vivid,  only  dur 
ing  all  its  earlier  part  and  in  respect  to  the  non- 
intimate  things  of  the  later  prime  of  its  author,  and 
to  stand  off  as  soon  as  her  personal  plot  began  to 
thicken.  You  see  it  was  a  book  written  in  middle 
life,  not  in  old  age,  and  the  "thick"  things,  the 
thickest,  of  her  remarkable  past  were  still  then  very 
close  behind  her.  But  as  an  autobiography  of  the 
beginnings  and  earlier  maturities  of  life  it's  indeed 
finer  and  jollier  than  anything  there  is. 

Yes,  how  your  loss,  for  the  present,  of  Nohant 
is  swept  away  on  the  awful  tide  of  the  Great  In 
terruption!  This  last  is  as  mild  a  name  for  the 
hideous  matter  as  one  can  consent  to  give — and  I 
confess  I  live  under  the  blackness  of  it  as  under  a 
funeral  pall  of  our  murdered  civilization.  I  say 
"for  the  present"  about  Nohant,  and  you,  being 
young  and  buoyant,  will  doubtless  pick  up  lost 
opportunities  in  some  incalculable  future ;  but  that 
time  looks  to  me  as  the  past  already  looks — I  mean 


388       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES 


1914 


the  recent  past  of  happy  motor-runs,  on  May  and 
June  afternoons,  down  to  the  St.  Alban's  and  the 
Witleys:  disconnected  and  fabulous,  fatuous,  fan 
tastic,  belonging  to  another  life  and  another  planet. 
I  find  it  such  a  mistake  on  my  own  part  to  have 
lived  on — when,  like  other  saner  and  safer  persons, 
I  might  perfectly  have  not — into  this  unspeakable 
give-away  of  the  whole  fool's  paradise  of  our  past. 
It  throws  back  so  livid  a  light — this  was  what  we 
were  so  fondly  working  for!  My  aged  nerves  can 
scarcely  stand  it,  and  I  bear  up  but  as  I  can.  I 
dip  my  nose,  or  try  to,  into  the  inkpot  as  often  as 
I  can;  but  it's  as  if  there  were  no  ink  there,  and  I 
take  it  out  smelling  gunpowder,  smelling  blood, 
as  hard  as  it  did  before.  And  yet  I  keep  at  it — or 
mean  to;  for  (tell  Alfred*  for  his  own  encourage 
ment — and  pretty  a  one  as  I  am  to  encourage!) 
that  I  hold  we  can  still,  he  and  I,  make  a  little 
civilization,  the  inkpot  aiding,  even  when  vast 
chunks  of  it,  around  us,  go  down  into  the  abyss — 
and  that  the  preservation  of  it  depends  upon  our 
going  on  making  it  in  spite  of  everything  and  sit 
ting  tight  and  not  chucking  up — wherefore,  after 
all,  vive  the  old  delusion  and  fill  again  the  flowing 
stylograph  —  for  I  am  sure  Alfred  writes  with 
one.  .  .  .  The  afternoons  and  the  aspects  here  are 
most  incongruously  lovely — and  so  must  be  yours. 
But  it's  goodnight  now,  and  I  am  most  truly  yours, 
dear  Mrs.  Sutro, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


AET.  71    TO, MISS  RHODA  BROUGHTON  389 


To  Miss  Rhoda  Broughton. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

August  10th,  1914. 
Dearest  Rhoda! 

It  is  not  a  figure  of  speech  but  an  absolute 
truth  that  even  if  I  had  not  received  your  very 
welcome  and  sympathetic  script  I  should  be  writ 
ing  to  you  this  day.  I  have  been  on  the  very  edge 
of  it  for  the  last  week — so  had  my  desire  to  make 
you  a  sign  of  remembrance  and  participation  come 
to  a  head;  and  verily  I  must — or  may — almost 
claim  that  this  all  but  "crosses"  with  your  own. 
The  only  blot  on  our  unanimity  is  that  it's  such  an 
unanimity  of  woe.  Black  and  hideous  to  me  is  the 
tragedy  that  gathers,  and  I'm  sick  beyond  cure  to 
have  lived  on  to  see  it.  You  and  I,  the  ornaments 
of  our  generation,  should  have  been  spared  this 
wreck  of  our  belief  that  through  the  long  years  we 
had  seen  civilization  grow  and  the  worst  become 
impossible.  The  tide  that  bore  us  along  was  then 
all  the  while  moving  to  tlds  as  its  grand  Niagara- 
yet  what  a  blessing  we  didn't  know  it.  It  seems 
to  me  to  undo  everything,  everything  that  was  ours, 
in  the  most  horrible  retroactive  way — but  I  avert 
my  face  from  the  monstrous  scene! — you  can  hate 
it  and  blush  for  it  without  my  help ;  we  can  each  do 
enough  of  that  by  ourselves.  The  country  and  the 
season  here  are  of  a  beauty  of  peace,  and  loveliness 
of  light,  and  summer  grace,  that  make  it  incon 
ceivable  that  just  across  the  Channel,  blue  as  paint 
today,  the  fields  of  France  and  Belgium  are  being, 
or  about  to  be,  given  up  to  unthinkable  massacre 
and  misery.  One  is  ashamed  to  admire,  to  enjoy, 
to  take  any  of  the  normal  pleasure,  and  the  huge 
shining  indifference  of  Nature  strikes  a  chill  to  the 
heart  and  makes  me  wonder  of  what  abysmal 


390       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1014 

mystery,  or  villainy  indeed,  such  a  cruel  smile  is 
the  expression.  In  the  midst  of  it  all  at  any  rate 
we  walked,  this  strange  Sunday  afternoon  (9th), 
my  niece  Peggy,  her  youngest  brother  and  I,  about 
a  mile  out,  across  the  blessed  grass  mostly,  to  see 
and  have  tea  with  a  genial  old  Irish  friend  (Lady 
Mathew,  who  has  a  house  here  for  the  summer,) 
and  came  away  an  hour  later  bearing  with  us  a 
substantial  green  volume,  by  an  admirable  eminent 
hand,  which  our  hostess  had  just  read  with  such  a 
glow  of  satisfaction  that  she  overflowed  into  easy 
lending.  I  congratulate  you  on  having  securely 
put  it  forth  before  this  great  distraction  was  upon 
us — for  I  am  utterly  pulled  up  in  the  midst  of  a 
rival  effort  by  finding  that  my  job  won't  at  all 
consent  to  be  done  in  the  face  of  it.  The  picture 
of  little  private  adventures  simply  fades  away  be 
fore  the  great  public.  I  take  great  comfort  in  the 
presence  of  my  two  young  companions,  and  above 
all  in  having  caught  my  nephew  by  the  coat-tail 
only  just  as  he  was  blandly  starting  for  the  con 
tinent  on  Aug.  1st.  Poor  Margaret  Payson  is 
trapped  somewhere  in  France — she  having  then 
started,  though  not  for  Germany,  blessedly;  and 
we  remain  wholly  without  news  of  her.  Peggy 
and  Aleck  have  four  or  five  near  maternal  relatives 
lost  in  Germany — though  as  Americans  they  may 
fare  a  little  less  dreadfully  there  than  if  they  were 
English.  And  I  have  numerous  friends — we  all 
have,  haven't  we? — inaccessible  and  unimaginable 
there;  it's  becoming  an  .anguish  to  think  of  them. 
Nevertheless  I  do  believe  that  we  shall  be  again 
gathered  into  a  blessed  little  Chelsea  drawing- 
room — it  will  be  like  the  reopening  of  the  salons, 
so  irrepressibly,  after  the  French  revolution.  So 
only  sit  tight,  and  invoke  your  heroic  soul,  dear 
Rhoda,  and  believe  me  more  than  ever  all-faith* 
fully  yours, 

HENRY  JAMES, 


.  71  TO  MRS.  WHARTON  391 


To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

August  19th,  1914. 
Dearest  Edith, 

Your  letter  of  the  15th  has  come — and  may 
this  reach  you  as  directly,  though  it  probably  won't. 
No,  I  won't  make  it  long — the  less  that  the  irrele 
vance  of  all  remark,  the  utter  extinction  of  every 
thing,  in  the  face  of  these  immensities,  leaves  me 
as  "all  silent  and  all  damned"  as  you  express  that 
it  leaves  you.  I  find  it  the  strangest  state  to  have 
lived  on  and  on  for — and  yet,  with  its  wholesale 
annihilation,  it  is  somehow  life.  Mary  Cadwal  is 
admirably  here — interesting  and  vivid  and  helpful 
to  the  last  degree,  and  Bessie  Lodge  and  her  boy 
had  the  heavenly  beauty,  this  afternoon,  to  come 
down  from  town  (by  train  s'entend)  rien  que  for 
tea — she  even  sneakingly  went  first  to  the  inn  for 
luncheon — and  was  off  again  by  5.30,  nobly  kind 
and  beautiful  and  good.  ( She  sails  in  the  Olympic 
with  her  aunt  on  Saturday.)  Mary  C.  gives  me  a 
sense  of  the  interest  of  your  Paris  which  makes  me 
understand  how  it  must  attach  you — how  it  would 
attach  me  in  your  place.  Infinitely  thrilling  and 
touching  such  a  community  with  the  so  all-round 
incomparable  nation.  I  feel  on  my  side  an  im 
mense  community  here,  where  the  tension  is  pro 
portionate  to  the  degree  to  which  we  feel  engaged— 
in  other  words  up  to  the  chin,  up  to  the  eyes,  if 
necessary.  Life  goes  on  after  a  fashion,  but  I  find 
it  a  nightmare  from  which  there  is  no  waking  save 
by  sleep.  I  go  to  sleep,  as  if  I  were  dog-tired  with 
action — yet  feel  like  the  chilled  vicillards  in  the 
old  epics,  infirm  and  helpless  at  home  with  the 
women,  while  the  plains  are  ringing  with  battle. 
The  season  here  is  monotonously  magnificent — 
and  we  look  inconceivably  off  across  the  blue  chan- 


392       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1914 

nel,  the  lovely  rim,  toward  the  nearness  of  the 
horrors  that  are  in  perpetration  just  beyond.  .  .  . 
I  manage  myself  to  try  to  "work" — even  if  I  had, 
after  experiment,  to  give  up  trying  to  make  cer 
tain  little  fantoches  and  their  private  adventure 
tenir  debout.  They  are  laid  by  on  the  shelf — the 
private  adventure  so  utterly  blighted  by  the  pub 
lic;  but  I  have  got  hold  of  something  else,  and  I 
find  the  effort  of  concentration  to  some  extent  an 
antidote.  Apropos  of  which  I  thank  you  immense 
ly  for  D'Annunzio's  frenchified  ode — a  wondrous 
and  magnificent  thing  in  its  kind,  even  if  running 
too  much — for  my  "taste" — to  the  vituperative  and 
the  execrational.  The  Latin  Renascence  mustn't 
be  too  much  for  and  by  that — for  which  its  facile 
resources  are  so  great.  .  .  .  What's  magnificent  to 
me  in  the  French  themselves  at  this  moment  is  their 
lapse  of  expression.  .  .  .  May  this  not  fail  of  you! 
I  am  your  ail-faithfully  tender  and  true  old 

H.  J. 


To  Mrs.  W.  K.  Clifford. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

August  22nd,  1914. 
Dearest  Lucy, 

I  have,  I  know,  been  quite  portentously 
silent — your  brief  card  of  distress  to-night  ( Satur 
day  p.m. — )  makes  me  feel  it — but  you  on  your 
side  will  also  have  felt  the  inevitability  of  this 
absence  of  mere  vain  and  vague  remark  in  the 
presence  of  such  prodigious  realities.  My  over 
whelmed  sense  of  them  has  simply  left  me  nothing 
to  say — the  rupture  with  all  the  blest  old  propor 
tion  of  things  has  been  so  complete  and  utter,  and 
I've  felt  as  if  most  of  my  friends  (from  very  few 
of  whom  I  have  heard  at  all)  were  so  wrapped  in 
gravities  and  dignities  of  silence  that  it  wasn't  fair 
to  write  to  them  simply  to  make  them  write.  And 


AET.  71     TO  MRS.  W.  K.  CLIFFORD          393 

so  it  has  gone — the  whole  thing  defying  expression 
so  that  one  has  just  stared  at  the  horror  and 
watched  it  grow.  But  I  am  not  writing  now,  dear 
est  old  friend,  to  express  either  alarm  or  despair — 
and  this  mainly  by  reason  of  there  being  so  high  a 
decency  in  not  doing  so.  I  hate  not  to  possess  my 
soul — and  oh  I  should  like,  while  I  am  about  that, 
to  possess  yours  for  you  too.  One  doesn't  possess 
one's  soul  unless  one  squares  oneself  a  good  deal,  in 
fact  very  hard  indeed,  for  the  purpose ;  but  in  pro 
portion  as  one  succeeds  that  means  preparation, 
and  preparation  means  confidence,  and  confidence 
means  force,  and  that  is  as  far  as  we  need  go  for 
the  moment.  Your  few  words  express  a  bad  ap 
prehension  which  I  don't  share — and  which  even 
our  straight  outlook  here  over  the  blue  channel 
of  all  these  amazing  days,  toward  the  unthinkable 
horrors  of  its  almost  other  edge,  doesn't  make  me 
share.  I  don't  in  the  least  believe  that  the  Ger 
mans  will  he  "here" — with  us  generally — because 
I  don't  believe — I  don't  admit — that  anything  so 
abject  as  the  allowance  of  it  by  our  overwhelming 
Fleet,  in  conditions  making  it  so  tremendously 
difficult  for  them  (the  G.'s),  is  in  the  least  con 
ceivable.  Things  are  not  going  to  be  so  easy  for 
them  as  that — however  uneasy  they  may  be  for 
ourselves.  I  insist  on  a  great  confidence — I  culti 
vate  it  as  resolutely  as  I  can,  and  if  we  were  only 
nearer  together  I  think  I  should  be  able  to  help  you 
to  some  of  the  benefit  of  it.  I  have  been  very 
thankful  to  be  on  this  spot  all  these  days — I  mean 
in  this  sympathetic  little  old  house,  which  has  some 
how  assuaged  in  a  manner  the  nightmare.  One 
invents  arts  for  assuaging  it — of  which  some  work 
better  than  others.  The  great  sore  sense  I  find  the 
futility  of  talk — about  the  cataclysm :  this  is  so  im 
possible  that  I  can  really  almost  talk  about  other 
things!  ...  I  am  supposing  you  see  a  goodish 
many  people  —  since  one  hears  that  there  are  so 


394       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1914 

many  in  town,  and  I  am  glad  for  you  of  that:  soli 
tude  in  these  conditions  being  grim,  even  if  society 
is  bleak!  I  try  to  read  and  I  rather  succeed,  and 
also  even  to  write,  and  find  the  effort  of  it  greatly 
pays.  Lift  up  your  heart,  dearest  friend — I  be 
lieve  we  shall  meet  to  embrace  and  look  back  and 
tell  each  other  how  appallingly  interesting  the 
whole  thing  "was."  I  gather  in  all  of  you  right 
affectionately  and  am  yours,  in  particular,  dearest 
Lucy,  so  stoutly  and  tenderly, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  William  James,  junior. 

Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

August  31st,  1914. 

Dearest  Bill, 

Very  blest  to  me  this  morning,  and  very 
blest  to  Peggy  and  Aleck  and  me,  your  momentous 
and  delightful  cable.  I  don't  know  that  we  are 
either  of  us  much  versed  in  the  weight  of  babies, 
but  we  have  strong  and,  I  find,  unanimous  views 
about  their  sex,  which  your  little  adventurer  into 
this  world  of  woe  has  been  so  good  as  gracefully  to 
meet.  We  are  all  three  thoroughly  glad  of  the 
nephew  in  him,  if  only  because  of  being  glad  of 
the  little  brother.  We  are  convinced  that  that's 
the  way  his  parents  feel,  and  I  hope  the  feeling  is 
so  happy  a  one  for  Alice  as  to  be  doing  her  all 
sorts  of  good.  Admirable  the  "all  well"  of  your 
cable:  may  it  go  straight  on  toward  better  and 
better.  .  .  . 

Our  joy  in  your  good  news  is  the  only  gleam 
of  anything  of  the  sort  with  which  we  have  been 
for  a  long  time  visited ;  as  an  admirable  letter  from 
you  to  Aleck,  which  he  read  me  last  night,  seemed 
to  indicate  (more  than  anything  we  have  yet  had 


AET.  71    TO  WILLIAM  JAMES,  JUNIOR     395 

from  home)  some  definite  impression  of.  Yes  in 
deed,  we  are  steeped  in  the  very  air  of  anxieties 
and  horrors — and  they  all  seem,  where  we  are 
situated,  so  little  far  away.  I  have  written  two  or 
three  times  to  Harry,  and  also  to  your  Mother, 
since  leaving  London,  and  Peggy  and  Aleck  in 
particular  have  had  liberal  responses  from  each. 
But  those  received  up  to  now  rather  suggest  a 
failure  quite  to  grasp  the  big  black  realities  of  the 
whole  case  roundabout  us  far  and  near.  The  War 
blocks  out  of  course — for  that  you  have  realised — 
every  other  object  and  question,  every  other  think- 
ability,  in  life ;  and  I  needn't  tell  you  what  a  strain 
it  all  is  on  the  nerves  and  the  faith  of  a  poor  old 
damaged  septuagenarian  uncle.  The  extraor 
dinary  thing  is  the  way  that  every  interest  and 
every  connection  that  seemed  still  to  exist  up  to 
exactly  a  month  ago  has  been  as  annihilated  as  if  it 
had  never  lifted  a  head  in  the  world  at  all.  .  .  . 
That  isn't,  with  reflection,  so  far  as  one  can  "calm 
ly"  reflect,  all  that  I  see;  on  the  contrary  there  is 
a  way  of  looking  at  what  is  taking  place  that  is 
positively  helpful,  or  almost,  when  one  can  con 
centrate  on  it  at  all — which  is  difficult.  I  mean  the 
view  that  the  old  systematic  organisation  and  con 
secration  of  such  forces  as  are  now  let  loose,  of 
their  unspeakable  infamy  and  insanity,  is  under 
going  such  a  triumphant  exhibition  in  respect  to 
the  loathsomeness  and  madness  of  the  same,  that 
it  is  what  we  must  all  together  be  most  face  to  face 
with  when  the  actual  blackness  of  the  smoke  shall 
have  cleared  away.  But  I  can't  go  into  that  now, 
any  more  than  I  can  make  this  letter  long,  dearest 
Bill  and  dearest  Alice,  or  can  say  anything  just 
now  in  particular  reference  to  what  is  happening. 
.  .  .  You  get  in  Boston  probably  about  as  much 
news  as  we  do,  for  this  is  enormously,  and  quite 
justly,  under  control  of  the  authorities,  and  noth 
ing  reaches  us  but  what  is  in  the  interest  of  opera- 


396       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1914 

tions,  precautions,  every  kind  of  public  disposition 
and  consideration,  for  the  day  and  hour.  This 
country  is  making  an  enormous  effort — so  far  as 
its  Fleet  is  concerned  a  triumphantly  powerful  and 
successful  one ;  and  there  is  a  great  deal  more  of  the 
effort  to  come.  Roughly  speaking,  Germany,  im 
mensely  prepared  and  with  the  biggest  fighting- 
power  ever  known  on  earth,  has  staked  her  all  on 
a  colossal  onslaught,  and  yet  is  far  even  yet  from 
having  done  with  it  what  she  believed  she  would 
in  the  time,  or  on  having  done  it  as  she  first  de 
signed.  The  horrors  of  the  crucifixion  of  Bel 
gium,  the  general  atrocity  of  the  Kaiser's  methods, 
haven't  even  yet  entirely  availed,  and  there  are 
chances  not  inconsiderable,  even  while  I  write, 
that  they  won't  entirely  avail;  that  is  that  certain 
things  may  still  happen  to  prevent  them.  But  it 
is  all  for  the  moment  tremendously  dark  and  awful. 
We  kind  of  huddle  together  here  and  try  to  lead 
our  lives  in  such  small  dignity  and  piety  as  we  may. 
.  .  .  More  and  more  is  it  a  big  fact  in  the  colossal 
public  situation  that  Germany  is  absolutely  locked 
up  at  last  in  a  maritime  way,  with  all  the  seas 
swept  of  her  every  vessel  of  commerce.  She  ap 
pears  now  absolutely  corked,  her  commerce  and 
communications  dead  as  a  doornail,  and  the  British 
activity  in  undisturbed  possession  of  the  seas.  This 
by  itself  is  an  enormous  service,  an  immeasurable 
and  finally  determinant  one,  surely,  rendered  by 
this  country  to  the  Allies.  But  after  hanging  over 
dearest  Alice  ever  so  blessingly  again,  and  tickling 
the  new  little  infant  phenomenon  with  a  now  quite 
practised  old  affectionate  nose,  I  must  pull  off 
and  be  just,  dearest  Bill,  your  own  all- fondest  old 
Uncle, 

H.  J. 


AET.  71     TO  MRS.  W.  K.  CLIFFORD          397 


To  Mrs.  W.  K.  Clifford. 
Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

August  31st,  1914. 
Dearest  L.  C. 

I  am  reduced  again,  you  see,  to  this  aid  to 
correspondence,  which  I  feel  myself  indeed  for 
tunate  to  possess,  under  the  great  oppression  of 
the  atmosphere  in  which  we  live.  It  makes  re 
cuperation  doubly  difficult  in  case  of  recurrence  of 
old  ailments,  and  I  have  been  several  days  in  bed 
with  a  renewed  kick  of  the  virus  of  my  dismal  long 
illness  of  1910-11  and  am  on  my  feet  to-day  for 
the  first  time.  Fortunately  I  know  better  how  to 
deal  with  it  now,  and  with  a  little  time  I  come 
round.  But  it  leaves  me  heavy-fingered.  One  is 
heavy -everything,  for  that  matter,  amid  these  hor 
rors — over  which  I  won't  and  can't  expatiate,  and 
hang  and  pore.  That  way  madness  lies,  and  one 
must  try  to  economise,  and  not  disseminate,  one's 
forces  of  resistance — to  the  prodigious  public  total 
of  which  I  think  we  can  each  of  us,  in  his  or  her 
own  way,  individually,  and  however  obscurely,  con 
tribute.  To  this  end,  very  kindly,  don't  send  me 
on  newspapers — I  very  particularly  beseech  you; 
it  seems  so  to  suggest  that  you  imagine  us  living  in 
privation  of,  or  indifference  to  them :  which  is  some 
how  such  a  sorry  image.  We  are  drenched  with 
them  and  live  up  to  our  neck  in  them;  all  the  Lon 
don  morning  ones  by  8  a.m.,  and  every  scrap  of 
an  evening  one  by  about  6.40  p.m.  We  see  the 
former  thus  at  exactly  the  same  hour  we  should 
in  town,  and  the  last  forms  in  which  the  latter 
appear  very  little  more  belatedly.  They  are  not 


398       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1914 

just  now  very  exhilarating — but  I  can  only  take 
things  in  in  waiting  silence — bracing  myself  un 
utterably,  and  holding  on  somehow  (though  to  God 
knows  what!)  in  presence  of  perpetrations  so  gra 
tuitously  and  infamously  hideous  as  the  destruction 
of  Louvain  and  its  accompaniments,  for  which  I 
can't  believe  there  won't  be  a  tremendous  day  of 
reckoning.  Frederic  Harrison's  letter  in  to-day's 
"Times"  will  have  been  as  much  a  relief  to  my 
nerves  and  yours,  and  to  those  of  millions  of  others, 
as  to  his  own  splendidly  fine  old  inflamed  ones; 
meaning  by  nerves  everything  that  shall  most  for 
midably  clamour  within  us  for  the  recorded  execra 
tion  of  history.  I  find  this  more  or  less  helpless 
assisting  at  the  so  long-drawn-out  martyrdom  of 
the  admirable  little  Belgium  the  very  intensest  part 
of  one's  anguish,  and  my  one  support  in  it  is  to  lose 
myself  in  dreams  and  visions  of  what  must  be  done 
eventually,  with  real  imagination  and  magnanim 
ity,  and  above  all  with  reed  material  generosity,  to 
help  her  unimaginable  lacerations  to  heal.  The 
same  inscrutable  irony  of  ethereal  peace  and  se 
renity  goes  on  shedding  itself  here  from  the  face 
of  nature,  who  has  "turned  out"  for  us  such  a 
summer  of  blandness  and  beauty  as  would  have 
been  worthy  of  a  better  cause.  It  still  goes  on, 
though  of  course  we  should  be  glad  of  more  rain; 
but  occasional  downfalls  even  of  that  heavenly  dew 
haven't  quite  failed  us,  and  more  of  it  will  very 
presumably  now  come.  There  is  no  one  here  in 
particular  for  me  to  tell  you  of,  and  if  it  weren't 
that  Peggy  is  with  me  I  should  be  pretty  high  and 
dry  in  the  matter  of  human  converse  and  contact. 
She  intensely  prefers  to  remain  with  me  for  the 
present — and  if  she  should  have  to  leave  I  think  I 
on  my  side  should  soon  after  have  to  return  to  my 
London  perch ;  finding  as  I  do  that  almost  absolute 
solitude  under  the  assault  of  all  the  horrors  isn't 
at  all  a  good  thing  for  me.  However,  that  is  not 


AET.  71     TO  MRS.  W.  K.  CLIFFORD  399 

a  practical  question  yet.  ...  I  think  of  you  all 
faithfully  and  fondly. 

Ever  your  old  devotedest 

H.  J. 


To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

This  moment  was  that  of  the  height  of  the  "Russian 
legend,"  and  like  everyone  else  H.  J.  was  eagerly  welcom 
ing  the  multitudinous  evidence  of  the  passage  of  a  vast 
Russian  army  through  England  to  France. 

Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

September  1st,  1914. 
Dear  E.  W., 

Cast  your  intelligent  eye  on  the  picture  from 
this  a.m.'s  Daily  Mail  that  I  send  you  and  which 
you  may  not  otherwise  happen  to  see.  Let  it  rest, 
with  all  its  fine  analytic  power,  on  the  types,  the 
dress,  the  caps  and  the  boots  of  the  so-called  Bel 
gians  disembarked — disembarked  from  where,  juste 
del! — at  Ostend,  and  be  struck  as  I  have  been  as 
soon  as  the  thing  was  shown  to  me  this  a.m.  by  the 
notice-taking  Skinner  (my  brave  Dr.,)  so  much 
more  notice-taking  than  so  many  of  the  persons 
around  us.  If  they  are  not  straight  out  of  the  his 
toric,  or  even  fictive,  page  of  Tolstoy,  I  will  eat 
the  biggest  pair  of  moujik  boots  in  the  collection! 
With  which  Skinner  told  me  of  speech  either  this 
morning  or  last  evening,  on  his  part,  with  a  man 
whose  friend  or  brother,  I  forget  which,  had  just 
written  him  from  Sheffield:  "Train  after  train  of 
Russians  have  been  passing  through  here  to-day 
(Sunday) ;  they  are  a  rum-looking  lot!"  But  an 
enormous  quantity  of  this  apparently  corroborative 
testimony  from  seen  trains,  with  " their  contents 
stared  at  and  wondered  at,  has  within  two  or  three 


400       LETTERS  OP  HENRY  JAMES       1014 

days  kept  coming  in  from  various  quarters.  Quan 
tum  valeat!  I  consider  the  reproduced  snap-shot 
enclosed,  however,  a  regular  gem  of  evidence. 
What  a  blessing,  after  all,  is  our — our — refined 
visual  sense! 

This  isn't  really  by  way  of  answer  to  your  own 
most  valuable  letter  this  morning  received — but 
that  is  none  the  less  gratefully  noted,  and  shall 
have  its  independent  acknowledgment.  I  am  bet 
ter,  thank  you,  distinctly;  the  recovery  of  power 
to  eat  again  means  everything  to  me.  I  greatly 
appreciated  your  kind  little  letter  to  my  most  in 
teresting  and  admirable  Peggy,  whom  you  left 
under  the  charm. 

My  own  small  domestic  plot  here  rocks  beneath 
my  feet,  since  yesterday  afternoon,  with  the  de 
cision  at  once  to  volunteer  of  my  invaluable  and 
irreplaceable  little  Burgess!  I  had  been  much 
expecting  and  even  hoping  for  it,  but  definitely 
shrinking  from  the  responsibility  of  administering 
the  push  with  my  own  hand:  I  wanted  the  impulse 
to  play  up  of  itself.  It  now  appears  that  it  had 
played  up  from  the  first,  inwardly — with  the  de 
parture  of  the  little  Rye  contingent  for  Dover  a 
fortnight  ago.  The  awfully  decent  little  chap  had 
then  felt  the  pang  of  patriotism  and  martial  ardour 
rentres;  and  had  kept  silent  for  fear  of  too  much 
incommoding  me  by  doing  otherwise.  But  now 
the  clearance  has  taken  place  in  the  best  way  in 
the  world,  and  I  part  with  him  in  a  day  or  two. 

.  .  .  This  is  all  now  save  that  I  am  always  yours 
too  much  for  typists, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


AET.  71  TO  MRS.  RICHARD  W.  GILDER  401 

To  Mrs.  Richard  Watson  Gilder. 
Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 
September  2nd,  1914. 

My  dear  Helena, 

.  .  .  We  are  passing  here,  as  you  may  well 
suppose,  through  the  regular  fiery  furnace,  the 
sharpest  ordeal  and  the  most  tremendous,  even  on 
these  shores,  that  the  generations  have  been  through 
since  any  keeping  of  accounts,  and  yet  mild,  as 
one  keeps  reminding  oneself,  in  comparison  with 
the  lacerations  of  France  and  the  martyrdoms  of 
Belgium.  It  leaves  one  small  freedom  of  mind  for 
general  talk,  it  presses,  all  the  while,  with  every 
throb  of  consciousness ;  and  if  during  the  first  days 
I  felt  in  the  air  the  recall  of  our  Civil  War  shocks 
and  anxieties,  and  hurry  ings  and  doings,  of  1861, 
etc.,  the  pressure  in  question  has  already  become 
a  much  nearer  and  bigger  thing,  and  a  more  for 
midable  and  tragic  one,  than  anything  we  of  the 
North  in  those  years  had  to  face.  It  lights  up  for 
me  rather  what  the  tension  was,  what  it  must  have 
been,  in  the  South — though  with  difference  even 
in  that  correspondence.  The  South  was  more 
destitute  than  these  rich  countries  are  likely  even 
at  the  worst  to  find  themselves,  but  on  the  other 
hand  the  German  hordes,  to  speak  only  of  them, 
are  immeasurably  more  formidable  and  merciless 
than  our  comparatively  benign  Northern  armies 
ever  approached  being.  However,  I  didn't  mean 
to  go  into  these  historical  parallels — any  more  than 
I  feel  able,  dear  Helena,  to  go  into  many  points 
of  any  kind.  One  of  the  effects  of  this  colossal 
convulsion  is  that  all  connection  with  everything 
of  every  kind  that  has  gone  before  seems  to  have 
broken  short  off  in  a  night,  and  nothing  ever  to 
have  happened  of  the  least  consequence  or  rele- 


402       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES 

vance,  beside  what  is  happening  now.  Therefore 
when  you  express  to  me  so  beautifully  and  touch- 
ingly  your  interest  in  my  "Notes"  of — another  life 
and  planet,  as  one  now  can  but  feel,  I  have  to  make 
an  enormous  effort  to  hitch  the  allusion  to  my  pres 
ent  consciousness.  I  knew  you  would  enter  deeply 
into  the  chapter  about  Minnie  Temple,  and  had 
your  young,  your  younger  intimacy  with  her  at 
the  back  of  my  consciousness  even  while  I  wrote. 
I  had  in  mind  a  small,  a  very  small,  number  of 
persons  who  would  be  peculiarly  reached  by  what 
I  was  doing  and  would  really  know  what  I  was 
talking  about,  as  the  mass  of  others  couldn't,  and 
you  were  of  course  in  that  distinguished  little 
group.  I  could  but  leave  you  to  be  as  deeply 
moved  as  I  was  sure  you  would  be,  and  surely  I 
can  but  be  glad  to  have  given  you  the  occasion. 
I  remember  your  telling  me  long  ago  that  you  were 
not  allowed  during  that  last  year  to  have  access 
to  her ;  but  I  myself,  for  most  of  it,  was  still  further 
away,  and  yet  the  vividness  of  her  while  it  went  on 
seems  none  the  less  to  have  been  preserved  for  us 
all  alike,  only  waiting  for  a  right  pressure  of  the 
spring  to  bring  it  out.  What  is  most  pathetic  in 
the  light  of  to-day  has  seemed  to  me  the  so  trag 
ically  little  real  care  she  got,  the  little  there  was  real 
knowledge  enough,  or  presence  of  mind  enough, 
to  do  for  her,  so  that  she  was  probably  sacrificed 
in  a  degree  and  a  way  that  would  be  impossible 
to-day.  I  thank  you  at  any  rate  for  letting  me 
know  that  you  have,  as  you  say,  relievingly  wept. 
For  the  rest  your-  New  England  summer  life,  amid 
your  abounding  hills  and  woods  and  waters,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  more  intimate  strong  savour  your 
children  must  impart  to  it,  shines  upon  me  here, 
from  far  across  the  sea,  as  a  land  of  brighter  dream 
than  it's  easy  to  think  of  mankind  anywhere  as 
dreaming.  I  am  delighted  to  hear  that  these  things 
are  thus  comfortable  and  auspicious  with  you.  The 


AET.  71  TO  MRS.  RICHARD  W.  GILDER  403 

interest  of  your  work  on  Richard's  Life  wouldn't 
be  interesting  to  you  if  it  were  not  tormenting,  and 
wouldn't  be  tormenting  if  it  were  not  so  consider 
ably  worth  doing.  But,  as  I  say,  one  sees  every 
thing  without  exception  that  has  been  a  part  of 
past  history  through  the  annihilation  of  battle 
smoke  if  of  nothing  else,  and  all  questions,  again, 
swoon  away  into  the  obscure.  If  you  have  got 
something  to  do,  stick  to  it  tight,  and  do  it  with 
faith  and  force;  some  things  will,  no  doubt,  even 
tually  be  redeemed.  I  don't  speak  of  the  actualities 
of  the  public  situation  here  at  this  moment — be 
cause  I  can't  say  things  in  the  air  about  them.  But 
this  country  is  making  the  most  enormous,  the  most 
invaluable,  and  the  most  inspired  effort  she  has 
ever  had  to  put  her  hand  to,  and  though  the  devas 
tating  Huns  are  thundering  but  just  across  the 
Channel — which  looks  so  strangely  serene  in  a 
present  magnificence  of  summer — she  won't  have 
failed,  I  am  convinced,  of  a  prodigious  saving 
achievement. 

Yours,  my  dear  Helena,  all  affectionately, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

It  should  be  mentioned  that  Mrs.  Wharton  had  come 
to  England,  but  was  planning  an  early  return  to  Paris. 

Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

September  3rd,  1914. 
My  dear  E.  W., 

It's  a  great  luxury  to  be  able  to  go  on  in 
this  way.  I  wired  you  at  once  this  morning  how 
very  glad  indeed  I  shall  be  to  take  over  your  super 
fluous  young  man  as  a  substitute  for  Burgess,  if 
he  will  come  in  the  regular  way,  my  servant  en- 


404       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1914 

tirely,  not  borrowed  from  you  (otherwise  than  in 
the  sense  of  his  going  back  to  you  whenever  you 
shall  want  him  again;)  and  remaining  with  me  on 
a  wage  basis  settled  by  me  with  him,  and  about  the 
same  as  Burgess's,  if  possible,  so  long  as  the  latter 
is  away.  .  .  . 

I  am  afraid  indeed  now,  after  this  lapse  of  days, 
that  the  "Russian"  legend  doesn't  very  particularly 
hold  water — some  information  I  have  this  morn 
ing  in  the  way  of  a  positive  denial  of  the  War 
Office  points  that  way,  unless  the  sharp  denial  is 
conceivable  quand  meme.  The  only  thing  is  that 
there  remains  an  extraordinary  residuum  of  fact 
to  be  accounted  for:  it  being  indisputable  by  too 
much  convergence  of  testimony  that  trains  upon 
trains  of  troops  seen  in  the  light  of  day,  and  not 
recognised  by  innumerable  watchers  and  wonder- 
ers  as  English,  were  pouring  down  from  the  north 
and  to  the  east  during  the  end  of  last  week  and  the 
beginning  of  this.  It  seems  difficult  that  there 
should  have  been  that  amount  of  variously  scat 
tered  hallucination,  misconception,  fantastication 
or  whatever — yet  I  chuck  up  the  sponge! 

Far  from  brilliant  the  news  to-day  of  course, 
and  likely  I  am  afraid  to  act  on  your  disposition 
to  go  back  to  Paris;  which  I  think  a  very  gallant 
and  magnificent  and  ideal  one,  but  which  at  the 
same  time  I  well  understand,  within  you,  the  ur 
gent  force  of.  I  feel  I  cannot  take  upon  myself 
to  utter  any  relevant  remark  about  it  at  all — any 
plea  against  it,  which  you  wouldn't  in  the  least 
mind,  once  the  thing  determined  for  you,  or  any 
in  favour  of  it,  which  you  so  intensely  don't  require. 
I  understand  too  well — that's  the  devil  of  such  a 
state  of  mind  about  everything.  Whatever  resolu 
tion  you  take  and  apply  you  will  put  it  through 
to  your  very  highest  honour  and  accomplishment 
of  service ;  sur  quoi  I  take  off  my  hat  to  you  down 
to  the  ground,  and  only  desire  not  to  worry  you 


AET.  71  TO  MRS.  WHARTON  405 

with  vain  words.  ...  I  kind  of  hanker  for  any 
scrap  of  really  domestic  fact  about  you  all  that  I 
may  be  able  to  extract  from  Frederick  if  he  comes. 
But  I  shall  get  at  you  again  quickly  in  this  way, 
and  am  your  all-faithfullest 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

It  will  bo  remembered  that  the  first  news  of  the  bom 
bardment  of  Rheims  Cathedral  suggested  greater  destruc 
tion  than  was  the  fact  at  that  time.  The  wreckage  was 
of  course  carried  much  further  before  the  end  of  the  war. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

September  21st,  1914. 
Dearest  Edith, 

Rheims  is  the  most  unspeakable  and  im 
measurable  horror  and  infamy — and  what  is  ap 
palling  and  heart-breaking  is  that  it's  "for  ever 
and  ever"  But  no  words  fill  the  abyss  of  it — nor 
touch  it,  nor  relieve  one's  heart  nor  light  by  a  spark 
the  blackness;  the  ache  of  one's  howl  and  the  an 
guish  of  one's  execration  aren't  mitigated  by  a 
shade,  even  as  one  brands  it  as  the  most  hideous 
crime  ever  perpetrated  againt  the  mind  of  man. 
There  it  was — and  now  all  the  tears  of  rage  of  all 
the  bereft  millions  and  all  the  crowding  curses  of 
all  the  wondering  ages  will  never  bring  a  stone  of 
it  back!  Yet  one  tries — even  now — tries  to  get 
something  from  saying  that  the  measure  is  so  full 
as  to  overflow  at  last  in  a  sort  of  vindictive  deluge 
(though  for  all  the  stones  that  that  will  replace!) 
and  that  the  arm  of  final  retributive  justice  be 
comes  by  it  an  engine  really  in  some  degree  pro 
portionate  to  the  act.  I  positively  do  think  it  helps 
me  a  little,  to  think  of  how  they  can  be  made  to 
wear  the  shame,  in  the  pitiless  glare  of  history, 


406       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1914 

forever  and  ever — and  not  even  to  get  rid  of  it 
when  they  are  maddened,  literally,  by  the  weight. 
And  for  that  the  preparations  must  have  already 
at  this  hour  begun:  how  can't  they  be  as  a  tremen 
dous  force  fighting  on  the  side,  fighting  in  the  very 
fibres,  of  France?  I  think  too  somehow — though 
I  don't  know  why,  practically — of  how  nothing 
conceivable  could  have  so  damned  and  dished  them 
forever  in  our  great  art-loving  country! 

...  If  you  go  on  Thursday  I  can't  hope  to  see 
you  again  for  the  present,  but  all  my  blessings 
on  all  your  splendid  resolution,  your  courage  and 
charity !  Right  must  you  be  not  to  take  back  with 
you  any  of  your  Englishry — it's  no  place  for  them 
yet.  Frederick  will  hang  on  your  first  signal  to 
him  again — and  meanwhile  is  a  very  great  boon 
to  me.  I  wish  I  could  do  something  for  White,  if 
(as  I  take  it)  he  stays  behind;  put  him  up  at  the 
Athenaeum  or  something.  .  .  .  All  homage  and 
affection  to  you,  dearest  Edith,  from  your  desolate 
and  devoted  old 

H.  J. 


To  Mrs.  T.  S.  Perry. 
Dictated. 

Lamb  House,  Rye. 

September  22nd,  1914. 
My  dear  Lilla, 

Forgive  my  use  of  this  fierce  legibility  to 
speak  to  you  in  my  now  at  best  faltering  accents. 
We  eat  and  drink,  and  talk  and  walk  and  think, 
we  sleep  and  wake  and  live  and  breathe  only  the 
War,  and  it  is  a  bitter  regimen  enough  and  such 
as,  frankly,  I  hoped  I  shouldn't  live  on,  disillu 
sioned  and  horror-ridden,  to  see  the  like  of.  Not, 
however,  that  there  isn't  an  uplifting  and  thrilling 
side  to  it,  as  far  as  this  country  is  concerned,  which 


AET.  71          TO  MRS.  T.  S.  PERRY  407 

makes  unspeakably  for  interest,  makes  one  at  hours 
forget  all  the  dreadfulness  and  cling  to  what  it 
means  in  another  way.  What  it  above  all  means, 
and  has  meant  for  me  all  summer,  is  that,  looking 
almost  straight  over  hence  from  the  edge  of  the 
Channel,  toward  the  horizon-rim  just  beyond  the 
curve  of  which  the  infamous  violation  of  Belgium 
has  been  all  these  weeks  kept  up,  I  haven't  had  to 
face  the  shame  of  our  not  having  drawn  the  sword 
for  the  massacred  and  tortured  Flemings,  and  not 
having  left  our  inestimable  France,  after  vows 
exchanged,  to  shift  for  herself.  England  all  but 
grovelled  in  the  dust  to  the  Kaiser  for  peace  up  to 
the  very  latest  hour,  but  when  his  last  reply  was 
simply  to  let  loose  his  hordes  on  Belgium  in  silence, 
with  no  account  of  the  act  to  this  country  or  to 
France  beyond  the  most  fatuously  arrogant  "Be 
cause  I  choose  to,  damn  you!"  in  all  recorded  his 
tory,  there  began  for  us  here  a  process  of  pulling 
ourselves  together  of  which  the  end  is  so  far  from 
being  yet  that  I  feel  it  as  only  the  most  rudimen 
tary  beginning.  However,  I  said  I  couldn't  talk 
—and  here  I  am  talking,  and  I  mustn't  go  on,  it 
all  takes  me  too  far;  I  must  only  feel  that  all  your 
intelligence  and  all  your  sympathy,  yours  and  dear 
Thomas's,  and  those  of  every  one  of  you,  is  in 
tensely  with  us — and  that  the  appalling  and  crown 
ing  horror  of  the  persistent  destruction  of  Rheims, 
which  we  just  learn,  isn't  even  wanted  to  give  the 
measure  of  the  insanity  of  ferocity  and  presump 
tion  against -which  Europe  is  making  a  stand.  Do 
ask  Thomas  to  write  me  a  participating  word :  and 
think  of  me  meanwhile  as  very  achingly  and  shakily 
but  still  all  confidently  and  faithfully  yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


408       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1914 


To  Miss  Bhoda  Broughton. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 
October  1st,  1914. 

My  dear  Rhoda, 

.  .  „  For  myself,  with  Peggy's  necessary  de 
parture  from  my  side  some  three  weeks  ago,  I 
could  no  longer  endure  the  solitudinous  (and  plati 
tudinous)  side  of  my  rural  retreat;  I  found  I 
simply  ate  my  heart  out  in  the  state  of  privation 
of  converse  (any  converse  that  counted)  and  of 
remoteness  from  the  source  of  information — as  our 
information  goes.  So,  having  very  blessedly  this 
perch  to  come  to,  here  I  am  while  the  air  of  super 
ficial  summer  still  reigns.  London  is  agitating  but 
interesting — in  certain  aspects  I  find  it  even  quite 
uplifting — and  the  mere  feeling  that  the  huge 
burden  of  one's  tension  is  shared  is  something  of 
a  relief,  even  if  it  does  show  the  strain  as  so  much 
reflected  back  to  one.  Immensely  do  I  understand 
the  need  of  younger  men  to  take  refuge  from  it  in 
doing,  for  all  they  are  worth — to  be  old  and  dod 
dering  now  is  for  a  male  person  not  at  all  glorious. 
But  if  to  feel,  with  consuming  passion,  under  the 
call  of  the  great  cause,  is  any  sort  of  attestation  of 
use,  then  I  contribute  my  fond  vibration.  .  .  . 
During  these  few  days  in  town  I  have  seen  almost 
no  one,  and  this  London,  which  is,  to  the  eye,  im 
mensely  full  of  people  (I  mean  of  the  sort  who 
are  not  here  usually  at  this  season,)  is  also  a 
strange,  rather  sinister  London  in  the  sense  that 
"social  intercourse"  seems  (and  most  naturally) 
scarcely  to  exist.  I'm  afraid  that  even  your  salon, 
were  you  here,  would  inevitably  become  more  or 
less  aware  of  the  shrinkage.  Let  that  console  you 

a  little  for  not  yet  setting  it  up.    Dear  little 

I  shall  try  to  see — I  grieve  deeply  over  her  com- 


AET.  71  TO  MISS  RHODA  BROUGHTON     409 

plication  of  horrors.  We  all  have  the  latter,  but 
some  people  (and  those  the  most  amiable  and  most 
innocent)  seem  to  have  them  with  an  extra  devilish 
twist.  Not  "sweets"  to  the  sweet  now,  but  a  double 
dose  of  bitterness.  It's  all  a  huge  strain  and  a 
huge  nightmare  and  a  huge  unspeakability — but 
that  isn't  my  last  word  or  my  last  sense.  This 
great  country  has  found,  and  is  still  more  finding, 
certain  parts  of  herself  again  that  had  seemed  for 
long  a  good  deal  lost.  But  here  they  are  now — 
magnificent;  and  we  haven't  yet  seen  a  quarter  of 
them.  The  whole  will  press  down  the  scale  of 
fortune.  What  we  all  are  together  (in  our  so  un 
equal  ways)  "out  for"  we  shall  do,  through  thick 
and  thin  and  whatever  enormity  of  opposition.  We 
sufficiently  want  to  and  we  sufficiently  can — both 
by  material  and  volition.  Therefore  if  we  don't 
achieve,  it  will  only  be  because  we  have  lost  our 
essential,  our  admirable,  our  soundest  and  round 
est  identity — and  that  is  simply  inconceivable  to 
your  faithful  and  affectionate  old 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Edmund  Gosse. 

The  allusions  in  the  following  are  to  an  article  of  Mr. 
Gosse's  on  the  effect  of  the  war  of  1870  upon  French 
literature,  and  to  the  publication  at  this  moment  of  H.  J.'s 
Notes  on  Novelists. 

Dictated. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

October  15th,  1914. 
My  dear  Gosse, 

.  .  .  Your  article  for  the  Edinburgh  is  of  an 
admirable  interest,  beautifully  done,  for  the  num- 


410       LETTERS   OF  HENRY  JAMES       1914 

ber  of  things  so  happily  and  vividly  expressed  in 
it,  and  attaching  altogether  from  its  emotion  and 
its  truth.  How  much,  alas,  to  say  on  the  whole 
portentous  issue  (I  mean  the  particular  one  you 
deal  with)  must  one  feel  there  is — and  the  more 
the  further  about  one  looks  and  thinks!  It  makes 
me  much  want  to  see  you  again,  and  we  must 
speedily  arrange  for  that.  I  am  probably  doing 
on  Saturday  something  very  long  out  of  order  for 
me — going  to  spend  Sunday  with  a  friend  near 
town;  but  as  quickly  as  possible  next  week  shall  I 
appeal  to  you  to  come  and  lunch  with  me :  in  fact 
why  not  now  ask  you  to  let  it  be  either  on  Tuesday 
or  Wednesday,  20th  or  21st,  as  suits  you  best,  here, 
at  1.30?  A  word  as  to  this  at  any  time  up  to  Tues 
day  a.m.,  and  by  telephone  as  well  as  any  other- 
how,  will  be  all  sufficient. 

Momentous  indeed  your  recall,  with  such  exacti 
tude  and  authority,  of  the  effect  in  France  of  the 
1870-71  cataclysm,  and  interesting  to  me  as  bring 
ing  back  what  I  seem  to  myself  to  have  been  then 
almost  closely  present  at ;  so  that  the  sense  of  it  all 
again  flushes  for  me.  I  remember  how  the  death 
of  the  immense  old  Dumas  didn't  in  the  least 
emerge  to  the  naked  eye,  and  how  one  vaguely 
heard  that  poor  Gautier,  "librarian  to  the  Em 
press,"  had  in  a  day  found  everything  give  way 
beneath  him  and  let  him  go  down  and  down !  What 
analogies  verily,  I  fear,  with  some  of  our  present 
aspects  and  prospects!  I  didn't  so  much  as  know 
till  your  page  told  me  that  Jules  Lemaitre  was 
killed  by  that  stroke:  awfully  tragic  and  pathetic 
fact.  Gautier  but  just  survived  the  whole  other 
convulsion — it  had  led  to  his  death  early  in  '73. 
Felicitous  Sainte-Beuve,  who  had  got  out  of  the 
way,  with  his  incomparable  penetration,  just  the 
preceding  year!  Had  I  been  at  your  elbow  I 
should  have  suggested  a  touch  or  two  about  dear 
old  George  Sand,  holding  out  through  the  darkness 


AET.  71  TO  EDMUND  GOSSE  411 

at  Nohant,  but  even  there  giving  out  some  lights 
that  are  caught  up  in  her  letters  of  the  moment. 
Beautiful  that  you  put  the  case  as  you  do  for  the 
newer  and  younger  Belgians,  and  affirm  it  with 
such  emphasis  for  Verhaeren — at  present,  I  have 
been  told,  in  this  country.  Immense  my  respect 
for  those  who  succeed  in  going  on,  as  you  tell  of 
Gaston  Paris's  having  done  during  that  dreadful 
winter  and  created  life  and  force  by  doing.  I  my 
self  find  concentration  of  an  extreme  difficulty: 
the  proportions  of  things  have  so  changed  and  one's 
poor  old  "values"  received  such  a  shock.  I  say  to 
myself  that  this  is  all  the  more  reason  why  one 
should  recover  as  many  of  them  as  possible  and 
keep  hold  of  them  in  the  very  interest  of  civilisation 
and  of  the  honour  of  our  race;  as  to  which  I  am 
certainly  right — but  it  takes  some  doing!  Tremen 
dous  the  little  fact  you  mention  (though  indeed  I 
had  taken  it  for  granted)  about  the  absolute  cessa 
tion  of-  -'s  last  "big  sale"  after  Aug.  1st.  Very 
considerable  his  haul,  fortunately — and  if  gathered 
in ! — up  to  the  eve  of  the  fell  hour.  .  .  .  All  I  my 
self  hear  from  Paris  is  an  occasional  word  from 
Mrs.  Wharton,  who  is  full  of  ardent  activity  and 
ingenious  devotion  there — a  really  heroic  plunge 
into  the  breach.  But  this  is  all  now,  save  that  I 
am  sending  you  a  volume  of  gathered-in  (for  the 
first  time)  old  critical  papers,  the  publication  of 
which  was  arranged  for  in  the  spring,  and  the  book 
then  printed  and  seen  through  the  press,  so  that 
there  has  been  for  me  a  kind  of  painful  inevitability 
in  its  so  grotesquely  and  false-notedly  coming  out 
now.  But  no — I  also  say  to  myself — nothing  seri 
ous  and  felt  and  sincere,  nothing  "good,"  is  any 
thing  but  essentially  in  order  to-day,  whether  eco 
nomically  and  "attractively"  so  or  not!  Put  my 
volume  at  any  rate  away  on  a  high  shelf — to  be 
taken  down  again  only  in  the  better  and  straighter 
light  that  I  invincibly  believe  in  the  dawning  of. 


412        LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1914 

Let  me  hear,  however  sparely,  about  Tuesday  or 
Wednesday  and  believe  me  all  faithfully  yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Miss  Grace  Norton. 

"W.  E.  D."  is  William  Darwin,  brother-in-law  to 
Charles  Eliot  Norton.  "Richard"  is  the  latter's  son, 
Director  of  the  American  School  of  Archaeology  in  Rome, 
at  this  time  engaged  in  organising  a  motor-ambulance  of 
American  volunteers  in  France.  He  unhappily  died  of 
meningitis  in  Paris,  August  2,  1918. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

October  16th,  1914. 
Very  dear  old  Friend, 

How  can  I  thank  you  enough  for  the  deep 
intelligence  and  sympathy  of  your  beautiful  and 
touching  little  letter,  this  morning  received,  or  suf 
ficiently  bless  the  impulse  that  made  you  write  it? 
For  really  the  strain  and  stress  of  the  whole  hor 
ribly  huge  case  over  here  is  such  that  the  hand  of 
understanding  and  sympathy  reached  out  across  the 
sea  causes  a  grateful  vibration,  and  among  all  our 
vibrations  those  of  gratitude  don't  seem  appointed 
to  be  on  the  whole  the  most  numerous:  though  in 
deed  I  mustn't  speak  as  if  within  our  very  own  huge 
scope  we  have  not  plenty  of  those  too!  That  we 
can  feel,  or  that  the  individual,  poor  resisting-as- 
he-can  creature,  may  on  such  a  scale  feel,  and  so 
intensely  and  potently,  with  the  endlessly  multi 
tudinous  others  who  are  subject  to  the  same  assault, 
and  such  hundreds  of  thousands  of  them  to  so  much 
greater — this  is  verily  his  main  great  spiritual  har 
bourage;  since  so  many  of  those  that  need  more 
or  less  to  serve  have  become  now  but  the  waste  of 
waters !  Happy  are  those  of  your  and  my  genera 
tion,  in  very  truth,  who  have  been  able,  or  may 


AET.  71     TO  MISS  GRACE  NORTON  413 

still  be,  to  do  as  dear  W.  E.  D.  so  enviably  did, 
and  close  their  eyes  without  the  sense  of  deserting 
their  post  or  dodging  their  duty.  We  feel,  don't 
we?  that  we  have  stuck  to  and  done  ours  long 
enough  to  have  a  right  to  say  "Oh,  this  wasn't  in 
the  bargain ;  it's  the  claim  of  Fate  only  in  the  form 
of  a  ruffian  or  a  swindler,  and  with  such  I'll  have 
no  dealing:" — the  perfection  of  which  felicity,  I 
have  but  just  heard,  so  long  after  the  event,  was 
that  of  poor  dear  fine  Jules  Lemaitre,  who,  unwell 
at  the  end  of  July  and  having  gone  down  to  his  own 
little  native  pays,  on  the  Loire,  to  be  soigne,  read 
in  the  newspaper  of  the  morrow  that  war  upon 
France  had  been  declared,  and  fell  back  on  the 
instant  into  a  swoon  from  which  he  never  awoke. 
.  .  .  The  happiest,  almost  the  enviable  (except 
those  who  may  emulate  William)  are  the  younger 
doers  of  things  and  engagers  in  action,  like  our 
admirable  Richard  (for  I  find  him  so  admirable!) 
whom  I  can't  sufficiently  commend  and  admire  for 
having  thrown  himself  into  Paris,  where  he  can 
most  serve.  But  I  won't  say  much  more  now,  save 
that  I  think  of  you  with  something  that  I  should 
call  the  liveliest  renewal  of  affection  if  my  affec 
tion  for  you  had  ever  been  less  than  lively!  I  re 
joice  in  whatever  Peggy  has  been  able  to  tell  you 
of  me;  but  don't  you,  on  your  side,  fall  into  the 
error  of  regretting  that  she  came  back.  I  have 
done  nothing  so  much  since  her  departure  as  bless 
the  day  of  it;  so  wrong  a  place  does  this  more  and 
more  become  for  those  whose  life  isn't  definitely 
fixed  here,  and  so  little  could  I  have  borne  the 
anxiety  and  responsibility  of  having  her  on  my 
mind  in  addition  to  having  myself!  Have  me  on 
yours,  dearest  Grace,  as  much  as  you  like,  for  it 
is  exquisitely  sensible  to  me  that  you  so  faithfully 
and  tenderly  do;  and  that  does  nothing  but  good 
— real  helpful  good,  to  yours  all  affectionately, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


414       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES 


To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

A  passage  (translated  by  M.  Alfred  de  Saint  Andre) 
from  H.  J.'s  letter  to  Mrs.  Wharton  of  September  3rd 
(see  above)  had  been  read  at  a  meeting  of  the  Academic 
Fran9aise,  and  published  in  the  Journal  des  Debats.  The 
Hotel  d'lena  was  at  this  time  the  headquarters  of  the 
British  Red  Cross  Society  in  Paris. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions,  Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

October  17th,  1914. 

Very  dear  old  Friend! 

Yesterday  came  your  brave  letter  with  its 
two  so  remarkable  enclosures  and  also  the  interest 
ing  one  lent  me  to  read  by  Dorothy  Ward.  The 
sense  they  give  me  of  your  heroic  tension  and 
valour  is  something  I  can't  express — any  more  than 
I  need  to  for  your  perfect  assurance  of  it.  Posted 
here  in  London  your  letter  was  by  the  Walter 
Gays,  whom  I  hunger  and  thirst  for,  though  with 
out  having  as  yet  got  more  into  touch  than  through 
a  telephone  message  on  their  behalf  an  hour  ago 
by  the  manager,  or  whoever,  of  their  South  Ken 
sington  Hotel.  I  most  unfortunately  can't  see 
them  this  p.m.  as  they  proposed,  as  I  am  booked 
for  the  long  un-precedented  adventure  of  going 
down  for  a  couple  of  nights  to  Qu'acre ;  in  response 
to  a  most  touching  and  not-to-be-resisted  letter 
from  its  master.  G.  L.  and  P.  L.  are  both  to  be 
there  apparently;  and  I  really  rather  welcome  the 
break  for  a  few  hours  with  the  otherwise  unbroken 
pitch  of  London.  However,  let  me  not  so  much 
as  name  that  in  presence  of  your  tremendous  pitch 
of  Paris;  which  however  is  all  mixed,  in  my  con 
sciousness  with  yours,  so  that  the  intensity  of  yours 
drums  through,  all  the  while,  as  the  big  note.  With 
all  my  heart  do  I  bless  the  booming  work  (though 
not  the  booming  anything  else)  which  makes  for 


AET.  71  TO  MRS.  WHARTON  415 

you  from  day  to  day  the  valid  carapace,  the  in 
vincible,  if  not  perhaps  strictly  invulnerable,  ar 
mour.  So  golden-plated  you  shine  straight  over 
at  me — and  at  us  all! 

Of  the  liveliest  interest  to  me  of  course  the 
Debats  version  of  the  poor  old  Rheims  passage  of 
my  letter  to  you  at  the  time  of  the  horror — in  re 
spect  to  which  I  feel  so  greatly  honoured  by  such 
grand  courtesy  shown  it,  and  by  the  generous  trans 
lation,  for  which  I  shall  at  the  first  possible  mo 
ment  write  and  thank  Saint  Andre,  from  whom  I 
have  also  had  an  immensely  revealing  small  photo 
graph  of  one  of  the  aspects  of  the  outraged  cathe 
dral,  the  vividest  picture  of  the  irreparable  ravage. 
Splendid  indeed  and  truly  precious  your  report 
of  the  address  of  that  admirable  man  to  the  Rheims 
tribunal  at  the  hour  of  supreme  trial.  I  echo  with 
all  my  soul  your  lively  homage  to  it,  and  ask 
myself  if  anything  on  earth  can  ever  have  been  so 
blackly  grotesque  (or  grotesquely  black!)  as  the 
sublimely  smug  proposal  of  the  Germans  to  wipe 
off  the  face  of  the  world  as  a  living  force — substi 
tuting  for  it  apparently  their  portentous,  their 
cumbrous  and  complicated  idiom — the  race  that  has 
for  its  native  incomparable  tone,  such  form,  such 
speech,  such  reach,  such  an  expressional  conscious 
ness,  as  humanity  was  on  that  occasion  honoured 
and,  so  to  speak,  transfigured,  by  being  able  to  find 
(M.  Louis  Bossu  aiding!)  in  its  chords.  What  a 
splendid  creation  of  life,  on  the  excellent  man's 
part,  just  by  play  of  the  resource  most  familiar 
and  most  indispensable  to  him! 

This  is  all  at  this  moment.  ...  I  have  still  five 
pounds  of  your  cheque  in  hand — wanting  only  to 
bestow  it  where  I  practically  see  it  used.  I  haven't 
sent  more  to  Rye,  but  conferred  three  a  couple  of 
days  since  on  an  apparently  most  meritorious,  and 
most  intelligently-worked,  refuge  for  some  60  or 
70  that  is  being  carried  on,  in  the  most  fraternal 


416       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1914 

spirit,  by  a  real  working-class  circle  at  Hammer 
smith.  I  shall  distil  your  balance  with  equal  care; 
and  I  accompany  each  of  your  donations  with  a 
like  sum  of  my  own.  We  are  sending  off  hence 
now  every  day  regularly  some  7  or  8  London 
papers  to  the  Hotel  d'lena. 

Yours  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Thomas  Sergeant  Perry. 

Dictated. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.  W. 

25th  Oct.,  1914?. 
My  dear  Thomas, 

I  have  had  a  couple  of  letters  from  you 
of  late  for  which  I  thank  you,  but  the  contents  of 
which  reach  me,  you  will  understand,  but  through 
all  the  obstruction  and  oppression  and  obsession 
of  all  our  conditions  here — the  strain  and  stress  of 
which  seem  at  times  scarcely  to  be  borne.  Never 
theless  we  do  bear  them — to  my  sense  magnifi 
cently;  so  that  if  during  the  very  first  weeks  the 
sense  of  the  huge  public  horror  which  seemed  to 
have  been  appointed  to  poison  the  final  dregs  of 
my  consciousness  was  nothing  but  sickening  and 
overwhelming,  so  now  I  have  lived  on,  as  we  all 
have,  into  much  of  another  vision:  I  at  least  feel 
and  take  such  an  interest  in  the  present  splendid 
activity  and  position  and  office  of  this  country,  and 
in  all  the  fine  importance  of  it  that  beats  upon  one 
from  all  round,  that  the  whole  effect  is  uplifting 
and  thrilling  and  consoling  enough  to  carry  one 
through  whatever  darkness,  whatever  dismals.  As 
I  think  I  said  in  a  few  words  some  weeks  ago  to 
Lilla,  dear  old  England  is  not  a  whit  less  sound, 
less  fundamentally  sane,  than  she  ever  was,  but 


AET.  71  TO  THOMAS  SERGEANT  PERRY  417 

in  fact  ever  so  much  finer  and  inwardly  wiser,  and 
has  been  appointed  by  the  gods  to  find  herself 
again,  without  more  delay,  in  some  of  those  aspects 
and  on  some  of  those  sides  that  she  had  allowed 
to  get  too  much  overlaid  and  encrusted.  She  is 
doing  this  in  the  grand  manner,  and  I  can  only  say 
that  I  find  the  spectacle  really  splendid  to  assist  at. 
After  three  months  in  the  country  I  came  back  to 
London  early,  sequestration  there  not  at  all  an 
swering  for  nerves  or  spirits,  and  find  myself  in 
this  place  comparatively  nearer  to  information  and 
to  supporting  and  suggestive  contact.  I  don't  say 
it  doesn't  all  at  the  best  even  remain  much  of  the 
nightmare  that  it  instantly  began  by  being:  but 
gleams  and  rifts  come  through  as  from  high  and 
bedimmed,  yet  far-looking  and,  as  it  were,  promis 
ing  and  portending  windows :  in  fine  I  should  feel 
I  had  lost  something  that  ministers  to  life  and 
knowledge  if  our  collective  experience,  for  all  its 
big  black  streaks,  hadn't  been  imposed  on  us.  Let 
me  not  express  myself,  none  the  less,  as  if  I  could 
really  thus  talk  about  it  all:  I  can't— it's  all  too 
close  and  too  horrific  and  too  unspeakable  and  too 
immeasureable.  The  facts,  or  the  falsities,  of 
"news"  reach  you  doubtless  as  much  as  they  reach 
us  here — or  rather  with  much  more  licence:  and 
really  what  I  have  wanted  most  to  say  is  how  deeply 
I  rejoice  in  the  sympathetic  sense  of  your  words, 
few  of  these  as  your  couple  of  notes  have  devoted 
to  it.  You  speak  of  some  other  things — that  is  of 
the  glorious  "Institute,"  and  of  the  fond  severance 
of  your  connection  with  it,  and  other  matters ;  but 
I  suppose  you  will  understand  when  I  say  that  we 
are  so  shut  in,  roundabout,  and  so  pressed  upon 
by  our  single  huge  consciousness  of  the  public 
situation,  that  all  other  sounds  than  those  that  im 
mediately  belong  to  it  pierce  the  thick  medium  but 
with  a  muffled  effect,  and  that  in  fine  nothing  really 
draws  breath  among  us  but  the  multitudinous 


418       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1914 

realities  of  the  War.  Think  what  it  must  be  when 
even  the  interest  of  the  Institute  becomes  dim  and 
faint  I  But  I  won't  attempt  to  write  you  a  word 
of  really  current  history — ancient  history  by  the 
time  it  reaches  you:  I  throw  myself  back  through 
all  our  anxieties  and  fluctuations,  which  I  do  my 
best  not  to  be  at  the  momentary  mercy  of,  one  way 
or  the  other,  to  certain  deep  fundamentals,  which 
I  can't  go  into  either,  but  which  become  vivid  and 
sustaining  here  in  the  light  of  all  one  sees  and  feels 
and  gratefully  takes  in.  I  find  the  general  com 
munity,  the  whole  scene  of  energy,  immensely  sus 
taining  and  inspiring — so  great  a  thing,  every  way, 
to  be  present  at  that  it  almost  salves  over  the  haunt 
ing  sense  of  all  the  horrors :  though  indeed  nothing 
can  mitigate  the  huge  Belgian  one,  the  fact,  not 
seen  for  centuries,  of  virtually  a  whole  nation, 
harmless  and  innocent,  driven  forth  into  ruin  and 
misery,  suffering  of  the  most  hideous  sort  and  on 
the  most  unprecedented  scale — unless  it  be  the  way 
that  England  is  making  a  tremendous  pair  of  the 
tenderest  arms  to  gather  them  into  her  ample,  but 
so  crowded  lap.  That  is  the  most  haunting  thing, 
but  the  oppression  and  obsession  are  all  heavy 
enough,  and  the  waking  up  to  them  again  each 
morning  after  the  night's  oblivion,  if  one  has  at  all 
got  it,  is  a  really  bad  moment  to  pass.  All  life 
indeed  resolves  itself  into  the  most  ferocious  prac 
tice  in  passing  bad  moments.  .  .  .  Stand  all  of 
you  to  your  guns,  and  think  and  believe  how  you 
can  really  and  measurably  and  morally  help  us! 
Yours,  dear  Thomas,  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


ABT.  71     TO  HENRY  JAMES,  JUNIOR        419 

To  Henry  James,  junior. 

Dictated. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

October  30th,  1914. 
Dearest  Harry, 

.  .  .  Any  "news,"  of  the  from  day  to  day 
kind,  would  be  stale  and  flat  by  the  time  this  reaches 
you — and  you  know  in  New  York  at  the  moment 
of  my  writing,  very  much  what  we  know  of  our 
grounds  of  anxiety  and  of  hope,  grounds  of  pro 
ceeding  and  production,  moral  and  material,  in 
every  sort  and  shape.  If  we  only  had  at  this  mo 
ment  the  extra  million  of  men  that  the  now  so  more 
or  less  incredible  optimism  and  amiability  of  our 
spirit  toward  Germany,  during  these  last  abysmal 
years,  kept  knocking  the  bottom  out  of  our  having 
or  preparing,  the  benefit  and  the  effect  would  be 
heavenly  to  think  of.  And  yet  on  the  other  hand 
I  partly  console  myself  for  the  comparatively  awk 
ward  and  clumsy  fact  that  we  are  only  growing 
and  gathering  in  that  amount  of  reinforcement 
now,  by  the  shining  light  it  throws  on  England's 
moral  position  and  attitude,  her  predominantly  in 
curable  good-nature,  the  sublimity  or  the  egregious 
folly,  one  scarcely  knows  which  to  call  it,  of  her 
innocence  in  face  of  the  most  prodigiously  massed 
and  worked-out  intentions  of  aggression  of  which 
"history  furnishes  an  example."  So  it  is  that, 
though  the  country  has  become  at  a  bound  the 
hugest  workshop  of  every  sort  of  preparation  con 
ceivable,  the  men  have,  in  the  matter  of  numbers, 
to  be  wrought  into  armies  after  instead  of  before 
— which  has  always  been  England's  sweet  old  way, 
and  has  in  the  past  managed  to  suffice.  The  stuff 
and  the  material  fortunately,  however,  are  admi 
rable — having  had  already  time  to  show  to  what 


420      LETTERS  OP  HENRY   JAMES       1914 

tune  they  are ;  and,  as  I  think  I  wrote  your  Mother 
the  other  day,  one  feels  the  resources,  alike  of  char 
acter  and  of  material,  in  the  way  of  men  and  of 
every  other  sort  of  substance,  immense;  and  so, 
not  consenting  to  be  heaved  to  and  fro  by  the  short 
view  or  the  news  of  the  moment,  one  rests  one's 
mind  on  one  or  two  big  general  convictions — 
primarily  perhaps  that  of  the  certainty  that  Ger 
many's  last  apprehension  was  that  of  a  prolonged 
war,  that  it  never  entered  for  a  moment  into  the 
arrogance  of  her  programme,  that  she  has  every 
reason  to  find  such  a  case  ultra-grinding  and  such 
a  prospect  ultra-dismal:  whereas  nothing  else  was 
taken  for  granted  here,  as  an  absolute  grim  neces 
sity,  from  the  first.  But  I  am  writing  you  remarks 
quite  as  I  didn't  mean  to;  you  have  had  plenty  of 
these — at  least  Irving  Street  has  had — before;  and 
what  I  would  a  thousand  times  rather  have,  is  some 
remarks  from  there,  be  they  only  of  an  ardent 
sympathy  and  participation — as  of  course  what 
ever  else  in  the  world  could  they  be?  I  am  so 
utterly  and  passionately  enlisted,  up  to  my  eyes 
and  over  my  aged  head,  in  the  greatness  of  our 
cause,  that  it  fairly  sickens  me  not  to  find  every 
imagination  rise  to  it:  the  case — the  case  of  the 
failure  to  rise — then  seems  to  me  so  base  and  abject 
an  exhibition!  And  yet  I  remind  myself,  even  as 
I  say  [it],  that  the  case  has  never  really  once  hap 
pened  to  me — I  have  personally  not  encountered 
any  low  likeness  of  it ;  and  therefore  should  rather 
have  said  that  it  would  so  horrifically  affect  me  // 
it  were  supposable.  England  seems  to  me,  at  the 
present  time,  in  so  magnificent  a  position  before  the 
world,  in  respect  to  the  history  and  logic  of  her 
action,  that  I  don't  see  a  grain  in  the  scale  of  her 
Tightness  that  doesn't  count  for  attestation  of  it; 
and  in  short  it  really  "makes  up"  almost  for  some 
of  the  huge  horrors  that  constantly  assault  our 
vision,  to  find  one  can  be  on  a  "side,"  with  all  one's 


AET.  71     TO  HENRY  JAMES,  JUNIOR       421 

weight,  that  one  never  supposed  likely  to  be  offered 
one  in  such  perfection,  and  that  has  only  to  be  ex 
posed  to  more  and  more  light,  to  make  one  more 
glory,  so  to  speak,  for  one's  attachment,  for  one's 
association. 

Saturday,  Oct.  31st.  I  had  to  break  this  off 
yesterday,  and  now  can't  do  much  for  fear  of  miss 
ing  today's,  a  Saturday's  American  post.  Only 
everything  I  tried  yesterday  to  say  is  more  and 
more  before  me — all  feelings  and  impressions  in 
tensifying  by  their  very  nature,  as  they  do,  from 
day  to  day  under  the  general  outward  pressure, 
literally  the  pressure  of  experience  they  from  hour 
to  hour  receive;  such  experience  and  such  pressure 
for  instance  as  my  having  pulled  up  for  a  few 
minutes,  as  I  was  beginning  this  again,  to  watch 
from  my  windows  a  great  swinging  body  of  the 
London  Scottish,  as  one  supposes,  marching  past 
at  the  briskest  possible  step  with  its  long  line  of 
freshly  enlisted  men  behind  it.  These  are  now  in 
London,  of  course,  impressions  of  every  hour,  or 
of  every  moment;  but  there  is  always  a  particular 
big  thrill  in  the  collective  passage  of  the  stridingly 
and  just  a  bit  flappingly  kilted  and  bonneted,  when 
it  isn't  a  question  of  mere  parade  or  exercise,  as 
we  have  been  used  to  seeing  it,  but  a  suggestion, 
everything  in  the  air  so  aiding,  of  a  real  piece  of 
action,  a  charge  or  an  irresistible  press  forward, 
on  the  field  itself.  Of  a  like  suggestion,  in  a  gen 
eral  way,  was  it  to  me  yesterday  afternoon  to  have 
gone  again  to  see  my — already  "my"! — poor  Bel 
gian  wounded  at  St.  Bartholomew's;  with  whom 
it's  quite  a  balm  to  one's  feelings  to  have  established 
something  of  a  helpful  relation,  thanks  to  the 
power  of  freedom  of  speech,  by  which  I  mean  use 
of  idiom,  between  us — and  thanks  again  to  one's 
so  penetrating  impression  of  their  stricken  and 
bereft  patience  and  mild  fatalism.  Not  one  of 
those  with  whom  I  talked  the  last  time  had  yet 


LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1914 

come  by  the  shadow  of  a  clue  or  trace  of  any 
creature  belonging  to  him,  young  wife  or  child  or 
parent  or  brother,  in  all  the  thick  obscurity  of  their 
scatterment;  and  once  more  I  felt  the  tremendous 
force  of  such  convulsions  as  the  now-going-on  in 
wrenching  and  dislocating  the  presupposable  and 
rendering  the  actual  monstrous  of  the  hour,  what 
ever  it  is,  all  the  suffering  creature  can  feel.  Even 
more  interesting,  and  in  a  different  way,  naturally, 
was  a  further  hour  at  St.  B's  with  a  couple  of 
wardsful  of  British  wounded,  just  straight  back, 
by  extraordinary  good  fortune,  from  the  terrific 
fighting  round  about  Ypres,  which  is  still  going 
on,  but  from  which  they  had  been  got  away  in  their 
condition,  at  once  via  Saint-Nazaire  and  South 
ampton;  three  or  four  of  whom,  all  of  the  Grena 
dier  Guards,  who  seemed  genuinely  glad  of  one's 
approach  (not  being  for  the  time  at  all  otherwise 
visited,)  struck  me  as  quite  ideal  and  natural 
soldier-stuff  of  the  easy,  the  bright  and  instinctive, 
and  above  all  the,  in  this  country,  probably  quite 
inexhaustible,  kind.  Those  I  mention  were  intelli 
gent  specimens  of  course — one  picked  them  out 
rather  for  their  intelligent  faces;  but  the  ease,  as 
I  say,  the  goodhumour,  the  gaiety  and  simplicity, 
without  the  ghost  of  swagger,  of  their  individual 
adaptability  to  their  job,  made  an  impression  of 
them  about  as  satisfactory,  so  to  speak,  as  one 
could  possibly  desire  it.  ...  But  this  is  all  now — 
and  you'll  say  it's  enough!  Ever  your  affectionate 
old  Uncle, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


AET.  71  TO  HUGH  WALPOLE  423 


To  Hugh  Walpole. 
Mr.  Wftlpole  was  at  this  time  in  Russia. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 
November  21st,  1914. 

Dearest  Hugh, 

This  is  a  great  joy — your  letter  of  Novem 
ber  12th  has  just  come,  to  my  extreme  delight,  and 
I  answer  it,  you  see,  within  a  very  few  hours.  It 
is  by  far  the  best  letter  you  have  ever  written  me, 
and  I  am  touched  and  interested  by  it  more  than 
I  can  say.  Let  me  tell  you  at  once  that  I  sent  you 
that  last  thing  in  type-copy  because  of  an  anxious 
calculation  that  such  a  form  would  help  to  secure 
its  safe  arrival.  Your  own  scrap  was  a  signal  of 
the  probable  non-arrival  of  anything  that  seemed 
in  the  least  to  defy  legibility;  therefore  I  said  to 
myself  that  what  was  flagrantly  and  blatantly 
legible  would  presumably  reach  you.  ...  I  had 
better  make  use  of  this  chance,  however,  to  give 
you  an  inkling  of  our  affairs,  such  as  they  are, 
rather  than  indulge  in  mere  surmises  and  desires, 
fond  and  faithful  though  these  be,  about  your  own 
eventualities.  London  is  of  course  under  all  our 
stress  very  interesting,  to  me  deeply  and  infinitely 
moving — but  on  a  basis  and  in  ways  that  make 
the  life  we  have  known  here  fade  into  grey  mists 
of  insignificance.  People  "meet"  a  little,  but  very 
little,  every  social  habit  and  convention  has  broken 
down,  save  with  a  few  vulgarians  and  utter  mis- 
takers  (mistakers,  I  mean,  about  the  decency  of 
things;)  and  for  myself,  I  confess,  I  find  there  are 
very  few  persons  I  care  to  see — only  those  to  whom 
and  to  whose  state  of  feeling  I  am  really  attached. 
Promiscuous  chatter  on  the  public  situation  and 


424       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES 

the  gossip  thereanent  of  more  or  less  wailing 
women  in  particular  give  unspeakably  on  my 
nerves.  Depths  of  sacred  silence  seem  to  me  to 
prescribe  themselves  in  presence  of  the  sanctities 
of  action  of  those  who,  in  unthinkable  conditions 
almost,  are  magnificently  doing  the  thing.  Then 
right  and  left  are  all  the  figures  of  mourning — 
though  such  proud  erect  ones — over  the  blow 
that  has  come  to  them.  There  the  women  are 
admirable — the  mothers  and  wives  and  sisters;  the 
mothers  in  particular,  since  it's  so  much  the  younger 
lives,  the  fine  seed  of  the  future,  that  are  offered 
and  taken.  The  rate  at  which  they  are  taken  is 
appalling — but  then  I  think  of  France  and  Rus 
sia  and  even  of  Germany  herself,  and  the  vision 
simply  overwhelms  and  breaks  the  heart.  "The 
German  dead,  the  German  dead!"  I  above  all  say 
to  myself — in  such  hecatombs  have  they  been  ruth 
lessly  piled  up  by  those  who  have  driven  them,  from 
behind,  to  their  fate ;  and  it  for  the  moment  almost 
makes  me  forget  Belgium — though  when  I  remem 
ber  that  disembowelled  country  my  heart  is  at  once 
hardened  to  every  son  of  a  Hun.  Belgium  we 
have  hugely  and  portentously  with  us;  if  never  in 
the  world  was  a  nation  so  driven  forth,  so  on  the 
other  hand  was  one  never  so  taken  to  another's 
arms.  And  the  Dutch  have  been  nobly  hospitable ! 
.  .  .  Immensely  interesting  what  you  say  of  the 
sublime  newness  of  spirit  of  the  great  Russian 
people — of  whom  we  are  thinking  here  with  the 
most  confident  admiration.  I  met  a  striking  speci 
men  the  other  day  who  was  oddly  enough  in  the 
Canadian  contingent  (he  had  been  living  two  or 
three  years  in  Canada  and  had  volunteered  there;) 
and  who  was  of  a  stature,  complexion,  expression, 
and  above  all  of  a  shining  candour,  which  made 
him  a  kind  of  army-corps  in  himself.  .  .  .  But 
goodnight,  dearest  Hugh.  I  sit  here  writing  late, 
in  the  now  extraordinary  London  blackness  of 


AET.  71          TO  HUGH  WALPOLE  425 

darkness  and  (almost)  tension  of  stillness.  The 
alarms  we  have  had  here  as  yet  come  to  nothing. 
Please  believe  in  the  fond  fidelity  with  which  I 
think  of  you.  Oh  for  the  day  of  reparation  and 
reunion!  I  hope  for  you  that  you  may  have  the 
great  and  terrible  experience  of  Ambulance  service 
at  the  front.  Ah  how  I  pray  you  also  may  receive 
this  benediction  from  your  affectionate  old 

H.  J. 


To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

Mr.  Walter  Berry  had  just  passed  through  London 
on  his  way  back  to  Paris  from  a  brief  expedition  to  Berlin. 
The  revived  work  which  H.  J.  was  now  carrying  forward 
was  The  Sense  of  the  Past. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions,  Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

December  1st,  1914. 
Dearest  Edith, 

Walter  offers  me  kindly  to  carry  you  my 
word,  and  I  don't  want  him  to  go  empty-handed, 
though  verily  only  the  poor  shrunken  sediment  of 
me  is  practically  left  after  the  overwhelming  and 
ecrasant  effect  of  listening  to  him  on  the  subject 
of  the  transcendent  high  pitch  of  Berlin.  I  kick 
myself  for  being  so  flattened  out  by  it,  and  ask 
myself  moreover  why  I  should  feel  it  in  any  degree 
as  a  revelation,  when  it  consists  really  of  nothing 
but  what  one  has  been  constantly  saying  to  one's 
self — one's  mind's  eye  perpetually  blinking  at  it, 
as  presumably  the  case — all  these  weeks  and  weeks. 
It's  the  personal  note  of  testimony  that  has  caused 
it  to  knock  me  up — what  has  permitted  this  being 
the  nature  and  degree  of  my  unspeakable  and 
abysmal  sensibility  where  "our  cause"  is  concerned, 
and  the  fantastic  force,  the  prodigious  passion, 
with  which  my  affections  are  engaged  in  it.  They 
grow  more  and  more  so — and  my  soul  is  in  the 


426       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1914 

whole  connection  one  huge  sore  ache.  That  makes 
me  dodge  lurid  lights  when  I  ought  doubtless  but 
personally  to  glare  back  at  them — as  under  the 
effect  of  many  of  my  impressions  here  I  frequently 
do — or  almost !  For  the  moment  I  am  quite  floored 
— but  I  suppose  I  shall  after  a  while  pick  myself 
up,  I  dare  say,  for  that  matter,  that  I  am  down 
pretty  often — for  I  find  I  am  constantly  picking 
myself  up.  So  even  this  time  I  don't  really  de 
spair.  About  Belgium  Walter  was  so  admirably 
and  unspeakably  interesting — if  the  word  be  not 
mean  for  the  scale  of  such  tragedy — which  you'll 
have  from  him  all  for  yourself.  If  I  don't  call  his 
Berlin  simply  interesting  and  have  done  with  it, 
that's  because  the  very  faculty  of  attention  is  so 
overestrained  by  it  as  to  hurt.  This  takes  you  all 
my  love.  I  have  got  back  to  trying  to  work — on 
one  of  three  books  begun  and  abandoned — at  the 
end  of  some  "30,000  words" — 15  years  ago,  and 
fished  out  of  the  depths  of  an  old  drawer  at  Lamb 
House  (I  sent  Miss  Bosanquet  down  to  hunt  it 
up)  as  perhaps  offering  a  certain  defiance  of  sub 
ject  to  the  law  by  which  most  things  now  perish 
in  the  public  blight.  This  does  seem  to  kind  of 
intrinsically  resist — and  I  have  hopes.  But  I  must 
rally  now  before  getting  back  to  it.  So  pray  for 
me  that  I  do,  and  invite  dear  Walter  to  kneel  by 
my  side  and  believe  me  your  faithfully  fond 

HENRY  JAMES. 


AET.  71         TO  MRS.  T.  S.  PERRY  427 

To  Mrs.  T.  S.  Perry. 

Dictated. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 
December  llth,  1914. 

Dear  and  so  sympathetic  Lilla! 

I  have  been  these  many,  by  which  I  mean 
too  many,  days  in  receipt  of  your  brave  letter  and 
impassioned  sonnet — a  combination  that  has  done 
me,  I  assure  you,  no  end  of  good.  I  so  ache  and 
yearn,  here  more  or  less  on  the  spot,  with  the  force 
of  my  interest  in  our  public  situation,  I  feel  my 
self  in  short  such  a  glowing  and  flaring  firebrand, 
that  I  can't  have  enough  of  the  blest  article  you 
supply,  my  standard  of  what  constitutes  enough 
being  so  high!  .  .  .  Your  sonnet  strikes  me  as 
very  well  made — which  all  sonnets  from  "female" 
pens  are  not;  and  since  you  invoke  American  asso 
ciation  with  us  you  do  the  fine  thing  in  invoking  it 
up  to  the  hilt.  Of  course  you  can  all  do  us  most 
good  by  simply  feeling  and  uttering  as  the  best 
of  you  do — there  having  come  in  my  way  several 
copious  pronouncements  by  the  American  Press 
than  which  it  has  seemed  to  me  there  could  have 
been  nothing  better  in  the  way  of  perfect  under 
standing  and  happy  expression.  I  have  said  to 
myself  in  presence  of  some  of  them  "Oh  blest  and 
wondrous  the  miracle ;  the  force  of  events,  the  light 
of  our  Cause,  is  absolutely  inspiring  the  newspaper 
tone  over  there  with  the  last  thing  one  ever  ex 
pected  it  to  have,  style  and  the  weight  of  style; 
so  that  all  the  good  things  are  literally  on  our  side 
at  once!" 

It's  delightful  to  me  to  hear  of  your  local  knit 
ting  and  sewing  circle — it  quite  goes  to  my  heart 
in  fact  to  catch  your  echo  of  the  brave  click  of  the 


428       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1914 

needles  at  gentle  Hancock!  They  click  under  my 
own  mild  roof  from  morning  to  night,  so  that  I 
can't  quite  say  why  I  don't  find  my  soup  flavoured 
with  khaki  wool  or  my  napkin  inadvertently  re 
placed  by  a  large  grey  sock.  But  the  great  thing 
is  that  it's  really  a  pity  you  are  not  here  for  partici 
pation  in  the  fine  old  Einglish  thrill  and  throb  of 
all  that  goes  forward  simply  from  day  to  day  and 
that  makes  the  common  texture  of  our  life:  you 
would  generously  abound  in  the  sense  of  it,  I  feel, 
and  be  grateful  for  it  as  a  kind  of  invaluable,  a 
really  cherishable,  "race"  experience.  One  wouldn't 
have  to  explain  anything  to  you — you  would  take 
it  all  down  in  a  gulp,  the  kind  of  gulp  in  which 
one  has  to  indulge  to  keep  from  breaking  down 
under  the  positive  pang  of  comprehension  and  emo 
tion.  Two  afternoons  ago  I  caught  that  gulp, 
twice  over,  in  the  very  act — while  listening  to  that 
dear  and  affable  Emile  Boutroux  make  an  ex 
quisite  philosophic  address  to  the  British  Academy, 
which  he  had  come  over  for  the  purpose  of,  and 
then  hearing  the  less  consummate,  yet  sturdily 
sensitive  and  expressive  Lord  Chancellor  (Hal- 
dane)  utter  to  him,  in  return,  the  thanks  of  the 
select  and  intense  auditory  and  their  sense  of  the 
beautiful  and  wonderful  and  unprecedented  unison 
of  nations  that  the  occasion  symbolised  and  cele 
brated.  In  the  quietest  way  in  the  world  Bou 
troux  just  escaped  "breaking  down"  in  his  prelimi 
nary  reference  to  what  this  meant  and  how  he 
felt,  and  just  so  the  good  Haldane  grazed  the  same 
almost  inevitable  accident  in  speaking  for  us,  all 
us  present  and  the  whole  public  consciousness, 
when  he  addressed  the  lecturer  afterwards.  What 
was  so  moving  was  its  being  so  utterly  unrehearsed 
and  immediate — its  coming,  on  one  side  and  the 
other,  so  of  itself,  and  being  a  sort  of  thing  that 
hasn't  since  God  knows  when,  if  ever,  found  itself 
taking  place  between  nation  and  nation.  I  kind 


AET.  71         TO  MRS.  T.  S.  PERRY  429 

of  wish  that  the  U.S.A.  were  not  (though  of  neces 
sity,  I  admit)  so  absent  from  this  feast  of  friend 
ship;  it  figures  for  me  as  such  an  extraordinary 
luxury  that  the  whirligig  of  time  has  turned  up 
for  us  such  an  intimacy  of  association  with  France 
and  that  France  so  exquisitely  responds  to  it.  I 
quite  tasted  of  the  quality  of  this  last  fact  two 
nights  ago  when  an  English  officer,  a  most  sane 
and  acute  middle-aged  Colonel,  dined  with  me  and 
another  friend,  and  gave  us  a  real  vision  of  what 
the  presence  of  the  British  forces  in  the  field  now 
means  for  the  so  extraordinarily  intelligent  and 
responsive  French,  and  what  a  really  unprecedent 
ed  relation  (I  do  wish  to  goodness  we  were  in  it!) 
between  a  pair  of  fraternising  and  reciprocating 
people  it  represents.  The  truth  is  of  course  that 
the  British  participation  has  been  extraordinarily, 
quite  miraculously,  effective  and  sustaining,  has 
had  in  it  a  quality  of  reinforcement  out  of  propor 
tion  to  its  numbers,  though  these  are  steadily  grow 
ing,  and  that  all  the  intelligence  of  the  wonderful 
France  simply  floods  the  case  with  appreciation 
and  fraternity ;  these  things  shown  in  the  charming 
way  in  which  the  French  most  of  all  can  show  the 
like  under  full  inspiration.  Yes,  it's  an  association 
that  I  do  permit  myself  at  wanton  moments  to 
wish  that  we,  in  our  high  worthiness  to  be  of  it, 
weren't  so  out  of!  But  I  mustn't,  my  dear  Lilla, 
go  maundering  on.  Intercede  with  Thomas  to  the 
effect  of  his  writing  me  some  thoroughly,  some 
intensely  and  immensely  participating  word,  for 
the  further  refreshment  of  my  soul.  It  is  refreshed 
here,  as  well  as  ravaged,  oh  at  times  so  ravaged: 
by  the  general  sense  of  what  is  maturing  and  mul 
tiplying,  steadily  multiplying,  on  behalf  of  the 
Allies — out  of  the  immediate  circle  of  whose  effec 
tively  stored  and  steadily  expanding  energies  we 
reach  over  to  a  slightly  bedimmed  but  inexpressible 
Russia  with  a  deep-felt  sense  that  before  we  have 


430       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       19H 

all  done  with  it  together  she  is  going  somehow  to 
emerge  as  the  most  interesting,  the  most  original 
and  the  most  potent  of  us  all.  Let  Thomas  take 
to  himself  from  me  that  so  I  engage  on  behalf  of 
his  chosen  people !  Yours  and  his  and  the  Daugh 
ter's  all  intimately  and  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Edmund  Gosse. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions,  Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

December  17th,  1914. 
My  dear  Gosse, 

This  is  a  scratch  of  postscript  to  my  note 
this  evening  posted  to  you — prompted  by  the  con 
sciousness  of  not  having  therein  made  a  word  of 
reply  to  your  question  as  to  what  I  "think  of 
things."  The  recovered  pressure  of  that  question 
makes  me  somehow  positively  want  to  say  that  (I 
think)  I  don't  "think"  of  them  at  all— though  I 
try  to;  that  I  only  feel,  and  feel,  and  ton  jours  feel 
about  them  unspeakably,  and  about  nothing  else 
whatever — feeling  so  in  Wordsworth's  terms  of 
exaltations,  agonies  and  loves,  and  (our)  uncon 
querable  mind.  Yes,  I  kind  of  make  out  withal 
that  through  our  insistence  an  increasing  purpose 
runs,  and  that  one's  vision  of  its  final  effect 
(though  only  with  the  aid  of  time]  grows  less  and 
less  dim,  so  that  one  seems  to  find  at  moments  it's 
almost  sharp!  And  meanwhile  what  a  purely 
suicidal  record  for  themselves  the  business  of  yes 
terday — the  women  and  children  (and  babes  in 
arms)  slaughtered  at  Scarborough  and  Whitby, 
with  their  turning  and  fleeing  as  soon  as  ever  they 
had  killed  enough  for  the  moment.  Oh,  I  do 
"think"  enough  to  believe  in  retribution  for  that. 
So  I've  kind  of  answered  you. 
Ever  yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


AET.  71     TO  MISS  GRACE  NORTON  431 


To  Miss  Grace  Norton. 

This  follows  on  the  letter  to  Miss  Norton  of  Oct.  16, 
1914,  dealing  with  the  work  in  France  of  her  nephew, 
Richard  Norton. 

Dictated. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

January  1st,  1915. 
Dearest  Grace! 

I  waste  no  time  in  explaining  again  how 
reduced  I  am  to  the  use  of  this  machinery  by  the 
absolute  physical  effect  on  my  poor  old  organism 
of  the  huge  tension  and  oppression  of  our  condi 
tions  here — to  say  nothing  of  the  moral  effect,  with 
which  the  other  is  of  course  intensely  mixed.  I  can 
tell  you  better  thus  moreover  than  by  any  weaker 
art  what  huge  satisfaction  I  had  yesterday  in  an 
hour  or  two  of  Richard's  company;  he  having  gen 
erously  found  time  to  lunch  with  me  during  two 
or  three  days  that  he  is  snatching  away  from  the 
Front,  under  urgency  of  business.  I  gathered 
from  him  that  you  hear  from  him  with  a  certain 
frequency  and  perhaps  some  fulness — I  know  it's 
always  his  desire  that  you  shall;  but  even  so  you 
perhaps  scarce  take  in  how  "perfectly  splendid" 
he  is — though  even  if  you  in  a  manner  do  I  want 
to  put  it  on  record  to  you,  for  myself,  that  I  find 
him  unmitigatedly  magnificent.  It's  impossible 
for  me  to  overstate  my  impression  of  his  intelligent 
force,  his  energy  and  lucidity,  his  gallantry  and 
resolution,  or  of  the  success  the  unswerving  appli 
cation  of  these  things  is  making  for  him  and  for 
his  enterprise.  Not  that  I  should  speak  as  if  he 
and  that  were  different  matters — he  is  the  enter 
prise,  and^that,  on  its  side,  is  his  very  self;  and 
in  fine  it  is  a  tremendous  tonic  —  among  a  good 
many  tonics  that  we  have  indeed,  thank  good- 


432       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 

ness! — to  get  the  sense  of  his  richly  beneficent 
activity.  He  seemed  extremely  well  and  "fit,"  and 
suffered  me  to  ply  him  with  all  the  questions  that 
one's  constant  longing  here  for  a  nearer  view,  com 
bined  with  a  kind  of  shrinking  terror  of  it,  given  all 
the  misery  the  greatest  nearness  seems  to  reveal, 
makes  one  restlessly  keep  up.  What  he  has 
probably  told  you,  with  emphasis,  by  letter,  is 
the  generalisation  most  sadly  forced  upon  him — 
the  comparative  supportability  of  the  fact  of  the 
wounded  and  the  sick  beside  the  desolating  view 
of  the  ravaged  refugees.  He  can  help  the  former 
much  more  than  the  latter,  and  the  ability  to  do 
his  special  job  with  success  is  more  or  less  sustain 
ing  and  rewarding;  but  the  sight  of  the  wretched 
people  with  their  villages  and  homes  and  resources 
utterly  annihilated,  and  they  simply  staring  at  the 
blackness  of  their  ruin,  with  the  very  clothes  on 
their  backs  scarce  left  to  them,  is  clearly  something 
that  would  quite  break  the  heart  if  one  could  afford 
to  let  it.  If  he  isn't  able  to  give  you  the  detail  of 
much  of  that  tragedy,  so  much  the  better  for  you — 
save  indeed  for  your  thereby  losing  too  some  ex 
amples  of  how  he  succeeds  in  occasional  mitigations 
quand  meme,  thanks  to  the  positive,  the  quite  blest, 
ferocity  of  his  passion  not  to  fail  of  any  service  he 
can  with  the  least  conceivability  render.  He  was 
most  interesting,  he  was  altogether  admirable,  as 
to  his  attitude  in  the  matter  of  going  outside  of 
the  strict  job  of  carrying  the  military  sick  and 
wounded,  and  them  only,  as  the  ancient  "Geneva 
Conventions"  confine  a  Red  Cross  Ambulance  to 
doing.  There  has  been  some  perfunctory  protest, 
not  long  since,  on  the  part  of  some  blank  agent  of 
that  (Red  Cross)  body,  in  relation  to  his  picking 
up  stricken  and  helpless  civilians  and  seeing  them 
as  far  as  possible  on  their  way  to  some  desperate 
refuge  or  relief ;  whereupon  he  had  given  this  critic 
full  in  the  face  the  whole  philosophy  of  his  pro- 


AET.  71     TO  MISS  GRACE  NORTON          433 

ceedings  and  intentions,  letting  the  personage 
know  that  when  the  Germans  ruthlessly  broke 
every  Geneva  Convention  by  attempting  to  shell 
him  and  his  cars  and  his  wounded  whenever  they 
could  spy  a  chance,  he  was  absolutely  for  doing  in 
mercy  and  assistance  what  they  do  in  their  dire 
brutality,  and  might  be  depended  upon  to  convey 
not  only  every  suffering  civilian  but  any  armed 
and  trudging  soldiers  whom  a  blest  chance  might 
offer  him.  His  remonstrant  visitor  remained  blank 
and  speechless,  but  at  the  same  time  duly  im 
pressed  or  even  floored,  and  Dick  will  have,  I 
think,  so  far  as  any  further  or  more  serious  pro 
test  is  concerned,  an  absolutely  free  hand.  The 
Germans  have  violated  with  the  last  cynicism  both 
the  letter  and  the  spirit  of  every  agreement  they 
ever  signed,  and  it's  little  enough  that  the  poor 
retaliation  left  us,  not  that  "in  kind,"  which  I  think 
we  may  describe  ourselves  as  despising,  but  that 
in  mere  reparation  of  their  ravage  and  mere 
scrappy  aid  to  ourselves,  should  be  compassed  by 
us  when  we  can  compass  it.  ...  Richard  told  me 
yesterday  that  the  aspect  of  London  struck  him 
as  having  undergone  a  great  change  since  his  last 
rush  over — in  the  sense  of  the  greater  flagrancy 
of  the  pressure  of  the  War;  and  one  feels  that  per 
fectly  on  the  spot  and  without  having  to  go  away 
and  come  back  for  it.  There  corresponds  with  it 
doubtless  a  much  tighter  screw-up  of  the  whole 
public  consciousness,  worked  upon  by  all  kinds  of 
phenomena  that  are  very  penetrating  here,  but  that 
doubtless  are  reduced  to  some  vagueness  as  re 
ported  to  you  across  the  sea — when  reported  at  all, 
as  most  of  them  can't  be.  Goodbye  at  any  rate  for 
this  hour.  What  I  most  wanted  to  give  you  was 
the  strong  side-wind  and  conveyed  virtue  of  Dick's 
visit.  I  hope  you  are  seeing  rather  more  than  less 
of  Alice  and  Peggy,  to  whom  I  succeed  in  writing 
pretty  often — and  perhaps  things  that  if  repeated 


434       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 

to  you,  as  I  trust  they  sometimes  are,  help  you  to 
some  patient  allowance  for  your  tremendously 
attached  old  friend, 

HENEY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  Dacre  Vincent. 

This  refers  to  the  loss  of  a  fine  old  mulberry-tree  that 
had  stood  on  the  lawn  at  Lamb  House. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

January  6th,  1915. 
My  dear  Margaret, 

It  has  been  delightful  to  me  to  hear  from 
you  even  on  so  sorry  a  subject  as  my  poor  old 
prostrated  tree;  which  it  was  most  kind  of  you  to 
go  and  take  a  pitying  look  at.  He  might  have 
gone  on  for  some  time,  I  think,  in  the  absence  of 
an  inordinate  gale — but  once  the  fury  of  the  tem 
pest  really  descended  he  was  bound  to  give  way, 
because  his  poor  old  heart  was  dead,  his  immense 
old  trunk  hollow.  He  had  no  power  to  resist  left 
when  the  south-wester  caught  him  by  his  vast 
criniere  and  simply  twisted  his  head  round  and 
round.  It's  very  sad,  for  he  was  the  making  of 
the  garden — he  was  it  in  person;  and  now  I  feel 
for  the  time  as  if  I  didn't  care  what  becomes  of 
it — my  interest  wholly  collapses.  But  what  a  folly 
to  talk  of  that  prostration,  among  all  the  prostra 
tions  that  surround  us!  One  hears  of  them  here 
on  every  side — and  they  represent  (of  course  I  am 
speaking  of  the  innumerable  splendid  young  men, 
fallen  in  their  flower)  the  crushingly  black  side  of 
all  the  horrible  business,  the  irreparable  dead  loss 
of  what  is  most  precious,  the  inestimable  seed  of 
the  future.  The  air  is  full  of  the  sense  of  all  that 
dreadfulness  —  the  echoes  forever  in  one's  ears. 


AET.  71     TO  MRS.  DACRE  VINCENT          435 

Still,  I  haven't  wanted  to  wail  to  you — and  don't 
write  you  for  that.  London  isn't  cheerful,  but  vast 
and  dark  and  damp  and  very  visibly  depleted  (as 
well  may  be!)  and  yet  is  also  in  a  sense  uplifting 
and  reassuring,  such  an  impression  does  one  get 
here  after  all  of  the  enormous  resources  of  this 
empire.  I  mean  that  the  reminders  at  every  turn 
are  so  great.  I  see  a  few  people — quite  as  many 
as  I  can  do  with;  for  I  find  I  can't  do  with  miscel 
laneous  chatter  or  make  a  single  new  acquaint 
ance — look  at  a  solitary  new  face  save  that  of 
the  wounded  soldiers  in  hospital,  whom  I  see  some 
thing  of  and  find  of  a  great  and  touching  interest. 
Yet  the  general  conditions  of  town  I  find  the  only 
ones  I  can  do  with  now,  and  I  am  more  glad  than 
I  can  say  to  think  of  Mrs.  Lloyd  and  her  daugh 
ters  supplanting  me,  at  their  ease,  at  dear  old  L.H. 
I  rejoice  to  hear  from  you  of  Beau's  fine  outlook 
and  I  send  him  my  aged  blessing — as  I  do  to  his 
Father,  who  must  take  good  comfort  of  him.  I 
am  afraid  on  the  other  hand  that  all  these  diluvian 
and  otherwise  devastated  days  haven't  contributed 
to  the  gaiety  (I  won't  say  of  "nations" — what  will 
have  become,  forever,  of  that?  but)  of  golfers  pure 
and  simple.  I  wonder  about  you  much,  and  very 
tenderly,  and  wish  you  weren't  so  far,  or  my  agility 
so  extinct.  I  find  I  think  with  dismay — positive 
terror — of  a  station  or  a  train — more  than  once 
or  twice  a  year.  Bitter  moreover  the  thought  to 
me  that  you  never  seem  now  in  the  way  of  coming 
up.  ... 

Goodnight,   dear  Margaret.      Yours   all   faith 
fully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


436       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 


To  the  Hon.  Evan  Charteris. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

Jan.  22,  1915. 
My  dear  Evan, 

I  am  more  deeply  moved  than  I  can  say 
by  the  receipt  of  your  so  admirably  vivid  and  in 
teresting  letter.  ...  I  envy  you  intensely  your 
opportunity  to  apply  that  [spirit  of  observation] 
in  these  immense  historic  conditions  and  thus  to 
have  had  a  hand  of  your  own  in  the  most  pro 
digious  affirmation  of  the  energy  and  ingenuity  of 
man  ("however  misplaced"!)  that  surely  can  ever 
have  been  in  the  world.  For  God's  sake  go  on 
taking  as  many  notes  of  it  as  you  possibly  can,  and 
believe  with  what  grateful  piety  I  shall  want  to  go 
over  your  treasure  with  you  when  you  finally  bring 
it  home.  Such  impressions  as  you  must  get,  such 
incalculable  things  as  you  must  see,  such  unutter 
able  ones  as  you  must  feel!  Well,  keep  it  all  up, 
and  above  all  keep  up  that  same  blest  confidence 
in  my  fond  appreciation.  Wonderful  your  account 
of  that  night  visit  to  the  trenches  and  giving  me 
more  of  the  sense  and  the  smell  and  the  fantas 
tic  grimness,  the  general  ordered  and  methodised 
horror,  than  anything  else  whatever  that  has  pre 
tended  to  enlighten  us.  With  infinite  interest  do 
I  take  in  what  you  say  of  the  rapidity  with  which 
the  inside-out-ness  of  your  conditions  becomes  the 
matter  of  course  and  the  platitudinous — which  I 
take  partly  to  result  from  the  tremendous  collec 
tivity  of  the  case,  doesn't  it?  the  fact  of  the  whole 
ness  of  the  stress  and  strain  or  intimate  fusion,  as 
in  a  common  pot,  of  all  exposures,  all  resistances, 
all  the  queerness  and  all  the  muchness!  But  I 
mustn't  seem  to  put  too  interrogatively  my  poor 
groping  speculations.  Only  wait  to  correct  my 


AET.  71  TO  THE  HON.  EVAN  CHARTERIS  437 

mistakes  in  some  better  future,  and  I  shall  under 
stand  you  down  to  the  ground.  We  add  day  to 
day  here  as  consciously,  or  labouringly,  as  you  are 
doing,  no  doubt,  on  your  side — it's  in  fact  like  lift 
ing  every  24  hours,  just  now,  a  very  dismally  dead 
weight  and  setting  it  on  top  of  a  pile  of  such 
others,  already  stacked,  which  promises  endlessly 
to  grow — so  that  the  mere  reaching  up  adds  all 
the  while  to  the  beastly  effort.  London  is  grey — 
in  moral  tone;  and  even  the  Zeppelin  bombs  of 
last  night  at  Yarmouth  do  little  to  make  it  flush. 
What  a  pitiful  horror  indeed  must  that  Ypres 
desolation  and  desecration  be  —  a  baseness  of 
demonism.  I  find,  thank  God,  that  under  your 
image  of  that  I  at  least  can  flush.  It  so  happens 
that  I  dine  to-morrow  (23d)  with  John  Sargent, 
or  rather  I  mean  lunch,  and  I  shall  take  for 
granted  your  leave  to  read  him  your  letter.  I 
bless  you  again  for  it,  and  am  yours  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Compton  Mackenzie. 

Dictated. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

January  23rd,  1915. 
My  dear  Monty, 

I  am  acknowledging  your  so  interesting 
letter  at  once ;  because  I  find  that  under  the  effect 
of  all  our  conditions  here  I  can't  answer  for  any 
postal  fluency,  however  reduced  in  quality  or  quan 
tity,  at  an  indefinite  future  time.  My  fluency  of 
the  moment  even,  such  as  it  is,  has  to  take  the 
present  mechanic  form ;  but  here  goes,  at  any  rate, 
to  the  extent  of  my  having  rejoiced  to  hear  from 
you,  not  of  much  brightness  though  your  news 
may  be.  I  tenderly  condole  and  participate  with 


438       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 

you  on  your  having  been  again  flung  into  bed. 
Truly  the  haul  on  your  courage  has  to  keep  on 
being  enormous — and  I  applaud  to  the  echo  the 
wonderful  way  that  virtue  in  you  appears  to  meet 
it.  You  strike  me  as  leading  verily  the  heroic  life 
at  a  pitch  nowhere  and  by  nobody  surpassed — even 
though  our  whole  scene  bristles  all  over  with  such 
grand  examples  of  it.  Since  you  are  up  and  at 
work  again  may  that  at  least  go  bravely  on — while 
I  marvel  again,  according  to  my  wont,  at  your  still 
finding  it  possible  in  conditions  that  I  fear  would 
be  for  me  dismally  "inhibitive."  I  bless  your  new 
book,  even  if  you  didn't  in  our  last  talk  leave  me 
with  much  grasp  of  what  it  is  to  be  "about."  In 
presence  of  any  suchlike  intention  I  find  I  want  a 
subject  to  be  able  quite  definitely  to  state  and 
declare  itself — as  a  subject;  and  when  the  thing  is 
communicated  to  me  (in  advance)  in  the  form  of 
So-and-So's  doing  this,  that  or  the  other,  or  Some 
thing-else's  "happening"  and  so  on,  I  kind  of  yearn 
for  the  expressible  idea  or  motive,  what  the  thing 
is  to  be  done  for,  to  have  been  presented  to  me; 
which  you  may  say  perhaps  is  asking  a  good  deal. 
I  don't  think  so,  if  any  cognisance  at  all  is  vouch 
safed  one ;  it  is  the  only  thing  I  in  the  least  care  to 
ask.  What  the  author  shall  do  with  his  idea  I  am 
quite  ready  to  wait  for,  but  am  meanwhile  in  no 
relation  to  the  work  at  all  unless  that  basis  has 
been  provided.  Console  yourself,  however:  dear 
great  George  Meredith  once  began  to  express  to 
me  what  a  novel  he  had  just  started  ("One  of  Our 
Conquerors")  was  to  be  about  by  no  other  art  than 
by  simply  naming  to  me  the  half-dozen  occur 
rences,  such  as  they  were,  that  occupied  the  pages 
he  had  already  written;  so  that  I  remained,  I  felt, 
quite  without  an  answer  to  my  respectful  inquiry — 
which  he  had  all  the  time  the  very  attitude  of  kind 
ly  encouraging  and  rewarding! 

But  why  do  I  make  these  restrictive  and  in- 


AET.  71    TO  COMPTON  MACKENZIE          439 

vidious  observations?  I  bless  your  book,  and  the 
author's  fine  hand  and  brain,  whatever  it  may  con 
sist  of;  and  I  bend  with  interest  over  your  remarks 
about  poor  speculating  and  squirming  Italy's 
desperate  dilemma.  The  infusion  of  that  further 
horror  of  local  devastation  and  anguish  is  too  sick 
ening  for  words — I  have  been  able  only  to  avert  my 
face  from  it;  as,  if  I  were  nearer,  I  fear  I  should 
but  wrap  my  head  in  my  mantle  and  give  up  alto 
gether.  The  truth  is  however  that  the  Italian  case 
affects  me  as  on  the  whole  rather  ugly — failing  to 
see,  as  one  does,  their  casus  belli,  and  having  to  see, 
as  one  also  does,  that  they  must  hunt  up  one  to  give 
them  any  sort  of  countenance  at  all.  I  should — 

January  25th. 

I  had  alas  to  break  off  two  days  ago,  having  been 
at  that  very  moment  flung  into  bed,  as  I  am  occa 
sionally  liable  to  [be],  somewhat  like  yourself; 
though  happily  not  in  the  prolonged  way.  I  am 
up  this  morning  again — though  still  in  rather  semi- 
sickly  fashion ;  but  trying  to  collect  my  wits  afresh 
as  to  what  I  was  going  to  say  about  Italy.  How 
ever,  I  had  perhaps  better  not  say  it — as  I  take, 
I  rather  fear,  a  more  detached  view  of  her  attitude 
than  I  see  that,  on  the  spot,  you  can  easily  do.  By 
which  I  mean  that  I  don't  much  make  out  how,  as 
regards  the  two  nations  with  whom  [she  is  in] 
alliance  (originally  so  unnatural,  alas,  in  the  mat 
ter  of  Austria!),  she  can  act  in  a  fashion,  any 
fashion,  regardable  as  straight.  I  always  hated 
her  patching  up  a  friendly  relation  with  Austria, 
and  thereby  with  Germany,  as  against  France  and 
this  country;  and  now  what  she  publishes  is  that 
it  was  good  enough  for  her  so  long  as  there  was 
nothing  to  be  got  otherwise.  If  there's  anything 
to  be  got  (by  any  other  alliance)  she  will  go  in  for 
that;  but  she  thus  gives  herself  away,  as  to  all  her 
recent  past,  a  bit  painfully,  doesn't  one  feel? — and 


440       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 

will  do  so  especially  if  what  she  has  in  mind  is  to 
cut  in  on  Turkey  and  so  get  ahead,  for  benefit  or 
booty  or  whatever,  of  her  very  own  allies.  How 
ever,  I  mustn't  speak  as  if  we  and  ours  shouldn't 
be  glad  of  her  help,  whatever  that  help  is  suscepti 
ble  of  amounting  to.  The  situation  is  one  for  not 
looking  a  gift-horse  in  the  mouth  —  which  only 
proves,  alas,  how  many  hideous  and  horrible  [as 
pects]  such  situations  have.  Personally,  I  don't 
see  how  she  can  make  up  her  mind  not,  in  spite  of 
all  temptations,  to  remain  as  still  as  a  mouse.  Isn't 
it  rather  luridly  borne  in  upon  her  that  the  Ger 
mans  have  only  to  make  up  their  minds  ruthlessly 
to  violate  Switzerland  in  order,  as  they  say,  "to 
be  at  Milan,  by  the  Simplon,  the  St.  Gotthard  or 
whatever,  in  just  ten  hours"?  Ugh! — let  me  not 
talk  of  such  abominations:  I  don't  know  why  I 
pretend  to  it  or  attempt  it.  I  too  am  trying  (I 
don't  know  whether  I  told  you)  to  bury  my  nose 
in  the  doing  of  something  daily;  and  am  finding 
that,  however  little  I  manage  on  any  given  occa 
sion,  even  that  little  sustains  and  inflames  and  re 
wards  me.  I  lose  myself  thus  in  the  mystery  of 
what  "art"  can  do  for  one,  even  with  every  blest 
thing  against  it.  And  why  it  should  and  how  it 
does  and  what  it  means — that  is  "the  funny  thing"! 
However,  as  I  just  said,  one  mustn't  look  a  gift- 
horse  etc.  So  don't  yourself  so  scrutinise  this  poor 
animal,  but  believe  me  yours  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


AET.  71  TO  MISS  ELIZABETH  NORTON   441 


To  Miss  Elizabeth  Norton. 

The  "pamphlet"  was  his  appeal  on  behalf  of  the  Amer 
ican  Volunteer  Motor- Ambulance,  included  in  Within  the 
Rim. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

Jan.  25th,  1915. 
Dearest  Lily, 

It  has  been  of  the  greatest  interest,  it  has 
been  delightful,  to  me  to  receive  to-night  your  so 
generous  and  informing  letter.  The  poor  little 
pamphlet  for  which  you  "thank"  me  is  a  helpless 
and  empty  thing — for  which  I  should  blush  were 
not  the  condition  of  its  production  so  legibly 
stamped  upon  it.  You  can't  say  things  unless  you 
have  been  out  there  to  learn  them,  and  if  you  have 
been  out  there  to  learn  them  you  can  say  them 
less  than  ever.  With  all  but  utterly  nothing  to 
go  upon  I  had  to  make  my  remarks  practically  of 
nothing,  and  that  the  effect  of  them  can  only  be 
nil  on  a  subscribing  public  which  wants  constant 
and  particular  news  of  the  undertakings  it  has  been 
asked  to  believe  in  once  for  all,  I  can  but  too 
readily  believe.  The  case  seems  different  here — 
I  mean  on  this  side  of  the  sea — where  scores  and 
scores  of  such  like  corps  are  in  operation  in 
France — the  number  of  ambulance-cars  is  many, 
many  thousand,  on  all  the  long  line — without  its 
becoming  necessary  for  them  that  their  work 
should  be  publicly  chronicled.  I  think  the  greater 
nearness  —  here  —  the  strange  and  sinister  near 
ness — makes  much  of  the  difference;  various  facts 
are  conveyed  by  personal — unpublished — report, 
and  these  sufficiently  serve  the  purpose.  What 
seems  clear,  at  all  events,  is  that  there  is  no  de 
visable  means  for  keeping  the  enterprise  in  touch 
with  American  sympathy,  and  I  sadly  note  there- 


442       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 

fore  what  you  tell  me  of  the  inevitable  and  not 
distant  end.  The  aid  rendered  strikes  me  as  hav 
ing  been  of  the  handsomest — as  is  splendidly  the 
case  with  all  the  aid  America  is  rendering,  in  her 
own  large-handed  and  full-handed  way;  of  which 
you  tell  me  such  fine  interesting  things  from  your 
own  experience.  It  makes  you  all  seem  one  vast 
and  prodigious  workshop  with  us  —  for  the  re 
sources  and  the  energy  of  production  and  creation 
and  devotion  here  are  of  course  beyond  estimation. 
I  imagine  indeed  that,  given  your  more  limited 
relation  to  the  War,  your  resources  in  money  are 
more  remarkable — even  though  here  (by  which  I 
mean  in  England,  for  the  whole  case  is  I  believe 
more  hampered  in  France)  the  way  the  myriad 
calls  and  demands  are  endlessly  met  and  met  is 
prodigious  enough.  It  does  my  heart  good  that 
you  should  express  yourself  as  you  do  —  though 
how  could  you  do  anything  else? — on  behalf  of  the 
simply  sacred  cause,  as  I  feel  it,  of  the  Allies;  for 
here  at  least  one  needs  to  feel  it  so  to  bear  up 
under  the  close  pressure  of  all  that  is  so  hideous 
and  horrible  in  what  has  been  let  loose  upon  us. 
Much  of  the  time  one  feels  that  one  simply  can't — 
the  heart-breaking  aspect,  the  destruction  of  such 
masses,  on  such  a  scale,  of  the  magnificent  young 
life  that  was  to  have  been  productive  and  prolific, 
bears  down  any  faith,  any  patience,  all  argument 
and  all  hope.  I  can  look  at  the  woe  of  the  bereft, 
the  parents,  the  mothers  and  wives,  and  take  it 
comparatively  for  granted  —  that  is  not  care  for 
what  they  individually  suffer  (as  they  seem  indif 
ferent  themselves,  both  here  and  in  France,  in  an 
extraordinarily  noble  way.)  But  the  dead  loss 
of  such  ranks  upon  ranks  of  the  finest  young 
human  material  —  of  life  —  that  is  an  abyss  into 
which  one  can  simply  gaze  appalled.  And  as  if 
that  were  not  enough  I  find  myself  sickened  to  the 
very  soul  by  the  apparent  sense  of  the  louche  and 


AET.  71  TO  MISS  ELIZABETH  NORTON     443 

sinister  figure  of  Mr.  Woodrow  Wilson,  who  seems 
to  be  aware  of  nothing  but  the  various  ingenious 
ways  in  which  it  is  open  to  him  to  make  difficulties 
for  us.  I  may  not  read  him  right,  but  most  of  my 
correspondents  at  home  appear  to,  and  they  minis 
ter  to  my  dread  of  him  and  the  meanness  of  his 
note  as  it  breaks  into  all  this  heroic  air. 

But  I  am  writing  you  in  the  key  of  mere  lamen 
tation — which  I  didn't  mean  to  do.  Strange  as  it 
may  seem,  there  are  times  when  I  am  much  up 
lifted — when  what  may  come  out  of  it  all  seems 
almost  worth  it.  And  then  the  black  nightmare 
holds  the  field  again  —  and  in  fact  one  proceeds 
almost  wholly  by  those  restless  alternations.  They 
consume  one's  vital  substance,  but  one  will  perhaps 
wear  them  out  first.  It  touches  me  deeply  that 
you  should  speak  tenderly  of  dear  old  London, 
for  which  my  own  affection  in  these  months  s'est 
accrue  a  thousandfold — just  as  the  same  has  taken 
place  in  my  attachment  for  all  these  so  very  pre 
ponderantly  decent  and  solid  people.  The  race  is 
worth  fighting  for,  immensely --in  fact  I  don't 
know  any  other  for  whom  it  can  so  much  be  said. 
.  .  .  Well,  go  on  working  and  feeling  and  believ 
ing  for  me,  dear  Lily,  and  God  uphold  your  right 
arm  and  carry  far  your  voice.  Think  of  me  too  as 
your  poor  old  aching  and  yet  not  altogether  col 
lapsing,  your  in  fact  quite  clinging, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


444       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1915 


To  Hugh  Walpole. 

Mr.  Walpole  was  now  serving  with  the  Red  Cross  on 
the  Russian  front. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

February  14th,  1915. 
Dearest  Hugh, 

"When  you  write,"  you  say,  and  when  do 
I  write  but  just  exactly  an  hour  after  your  letter 
of  this  evening,  that  of  February  1st,  a  fortnight 
ago  to  a  day,  has  come  to  hand?  I  delight  in  hav 
ing  got  it,  and  find  it  no  less  interesting  than 
genial — bristling  with  fine  realities.  Much  as  it 
tells  me,  indeed,  I  could  have  done  with  still  more ; 
but  that  is  of  course  always  the  case  at  such  a  time 
as  this,  and  amid  such  wonderments  and  yearn 
ings  ;  and  I  make  gratefully  the  most  of  what  there 
is.  The  basis,  the  connection,  the  mode  of  employ 
ment  on,  and  in,  and  under  which  you  "go  off," 
for  instance,  are  matters  that  leave  me  scratching 
my  head  and  exhaling  long  and  sad  sighs — but  as 
those  two  things  are  what  I  am  at  in  these  days 
most  of  my  time  I  don't  bring  them  home  most 
criminally  to  you.  Only  I  am  moved  to  beseech 
you  this  time  not  to  throw  yourself  into  the  thick 
of  military  operations  amid  which  your  want  of 
even  the  minimum  of  proper  eyesight  apparently 
may  devote  you  to  destruction,  more  or  less — after 
the  manner  of  the  blind  quart  d'heure  described 
to  me  in  your  letter  previous  to  this  one.  I  am 
sorry  the  black  homesickness  so  feeds  upon  you 
amid  your  terrific  paradoxical  friends,  the  sport 
alike  of  their  bodies  and  their  souls,  of  whom  your 
account  is  admirably  vivid;  but  I  well  conceive 
your  state,  which  has  my  tenderest  sympathy — 


AET.  71          TO  HUGH  WALPOLE  445 

that  nostalgic  ache  at  its  worst  being  the  invoca 
tion  of  the  very  devil  of  devils.  Don't  let  it  break 
the  spell  of  your  purpose  of  learning  Russian,  of 
really  mastering  it — though  even  while  I  say  this 
I  rather  wince  at  your  telling  me  that  you  incline 
not  to  return  to  England  till  September  next.  I 
don't  put  that  regret  on  the  score  of  my  loss  of 
the  sight  of  you  till  then  —  that  gives  the  sort  of 
personal  turn  to  the  matter  that  we  are  all  ashamed 
together  of  giving  to  any  matter  now.  But  the 
being  and  the  having  been  in  England  —  or  in 
France,  which  is  now  so  much  the  same  thing — 
during  at  least  a  part  of  this  unspeakable  year 
affects  me  as  something  you  are  not  unlikely  to  be 
sorry  to  have  missed;  there  attaches  to  it — to  the 
being  here — something  so  sovereign  and  so  initia 
tory  in  the  way  of  a  British  experience.  I  mean 
that  it's  as  if  you  wouldn't  have  had  the  full  gen 
eral  British  experience  without  it,  and  that  this 
may  be  a  pity  for  you  as  a  painter  of  British  phe 
nomena — for  I  don't  suppose  you  think  of  repro 
ducing  only  Russian  for  the  rest  of  your  shining 
days.  However,  I  hasten  to  add  that  I  feel  the 
very  greatest  aversion  to  intermeddlingly  advising 
you — your  completing  your  year  in  Russia  all  de 
pends  on  what  you  do  with  the  precious  time. 
You  may  bring  home  fruits  by  which  you  will  be 
wholly  justified.  Address  yourself  indeed  to  do 
ing  that  and  putting  it  absolutely  through — and 
I  will,  for  my  part,  back  you  up  unlimitedly. 
Only,  bring  your  sheaves  with  you,  and  gather  in 
a  golden  bundle  of  the  same.  I  detest,  myself, 
the  fine  old  British  horror — as  it  has  flourished  at 
least  up  to  now,  when  in  respect  to  the  great 
matter  that's  upon  us  the  fashion  has  so  much 
changed — of  doing  anything  consistently  and  seri 
ously.  So  if  you  should  draw  out  your  absence  I 
shall  believe  in  your  reasons.  Meanwhile  I  am 
myself  of  the  most  flaming  British  complexion — 


446       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 

the  whole  thing  is  to  me  an  unspeakably  intimate 
experience — if  it  isn't  abject  to  apply  such  a  term 
when  one  hasn't  had  one's  precious  person  straight 
up  against  the  facts.  I  have  only  had  my  poor 
old  mind  and  imagination — but  as  one  can  have 
them  here;  and  I  live  partly  in  dark  abysses  and 
partly  in  high  and,  I  think,  noble  elations.  But 
how,  at  my  age  and  in  my  conditions,  I  could  have 
beautifully  done  without  it!  I  resist  more  or 
less — since  you  ask  me  to  tell  you  how  I  "am";  I 
resist  and  go  on  from  day  to  day  because  I  want 
to  and  the  horrible  interest  is  too  great  not  to.  But 
that  same  is  adding  the  years  in  great  shovel-fulls 
to  our  poor  old  lives  (those  at  least  of  my  genera 
tion:)  so  don't  be  too  long  away  after  all  if  you 
want  ever  to  see  me  again.  I  have  in  a  manner 
got  back  to  work — after  a  black  interregnum;  and 
find  it  a  refuge  and  a  prop  —  but  the  conditions 
make  it  difficult,  exceedingly,  almost  insuperably, 
I  find,  in  a  sense  far  other  than  the  mere  distress 
ing  and  depressing.  The  subject-matter  of  one's 
effort  has  become  itself  utterly  treacherous  and 
false — its  relation  to  reality  utterly  given  away  and 
smashed.  Reality  is  a  world  that  was  to  be  capable 
of  this — and  how  represent  that  horrific  capability, 
historically  latent,  historically  ahead  of  it?  How 
on  the  other  hand  not  represent  it  either — without 
putting  into  play  mere  fiddlesticks? 

I  had  to  break  off  my  letter  last  night  from  ex 
cess  of  lateness,  and  now  I  see  I  misdated  it.  To 
night  is  the  15th,  the  p.m.  of  a  cold  grey  Sunday 
such  as  we  find  wintry  here,  in  our  innocence  of 
your  ferocities  of  climate;  to  which  in  your  place 
I  should  speedily  succumb.  That  buried  beneath 
the  polar  blizzard  and  the  howling  homesick  snow 
drift  you  don't  utterly  give  way  is,  I  think,  a  proof 
of  very  superior  resources  and  of  your  being 
reserved  for  a  big  future.  .  .  .  Goodnight,  how 
ever,  now  really,  dearest  Hugh.  I  follow  your 


AET.  71  TO  HUGH  WALPOLE  447 

adventure  with  all  the  affectionate   solicitude  of 
your  all-faithful  old 

H.  J. 


To  Mrs.  Henry  Cabot  Lodge. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

February  16th,  1915. 
My  dear  Mrs.  Lodge, 

It  is  indeed  very  horrible  that  having  had 
the  kindest  of  little  letters  from  you  ever  so  long 
ago  ( I  won't  remind  you  how  long — you  may  have 
magnanimusly  forgotten  it  a  little)  I  am  thanking 
you  for  it  only  at  this  late  day.  Explanations  are 
vain  things,  and  yet  if  I  throw  myself  on  the  big 
gest  explanation  that  ever  was  in  the  world  there 
may  be  something  in  it.  ...  Fortunately  the  in 
terest  and  the  sympathy  grow  (if  things  that  start 
at  the  superlative  degree  can  grow),  and  I  never 
am  sick  with  all  the  monstrosity  of  it  but  I  become 
after  a  bit  almost  well  with  all  the  virtue  and  the 
decency.  I  try  to  live  in  the  admiring  contempla 
tion  of  that  as  much  as  possible — and  I  thought  I 
already  knew  how  deeply  attached  I  am  to  this 
remarkable  country  and  to  the  character  of  its 
people.  I  find  I  haven't  known  until  now  the  real 
degree  of  my  attachment — which  I  try  to  show — 
that  is  to  apply — the  intensity  of  in  small  and 
futile  ways.  To-day  for  instance  I  have  been  tak 
ing  to  my  dentist  a  convalesced  soldier — a  mere 
sapper  of  the  R.E. — whom  I  fished  out  of  a  hos 
pital;  yesterday  I  went  to  the  Stores  to  send 
"food-chocolate"  to  my  cook's  nephew  at  the  front, 
Driver  Bisset  of  the  Artillery;  and  at  the  mo 
ment  I  write  I  am  putting  up  for  the  night  a 
a  young  ex -postman  from  Rye  who  has  come  up 
to  pass  the  doctor  tomorrow  for  the  Naval  Brigade. 


448       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES        1915 

These  things,  as  I  write  them,  make  me  almost  feel 
that  I  do  push  before  you  the  inevitability  of  my 
silence.  But  they  don't  mean,  please,  that  I  am 
not  living  very  intensively,  at  the  same  time,  with 
you  all  at  Washington — where  I  fondly  suppose 
you  all  to  entertain  sentiments,  the  Senator  and 
yourself,  Constance  and  that  admirable  Gussy, 
into  which  I  may  enter  with  the  last  freedom.  I 
won't  go  into  the  particulars  of  my  sympathy — 
or  at  least  into  the  particulars  of  what  it  imputes 
to  you:  but  I  have  a  general  sweet  confidence,  a 
kind  of  wealth  of  divination. 

London  is  of  course  not  gay  (thank  the  Lord;) 
but  I  wouldn't  for  the  world  not  be  here — there 
are  impressions  under  which  I  feel  it  a  kind  of  up 
lifting  privilege.  The  situation  doesn't  make  me 
gregarious — but  on  the  contrary  very  fastidious 
about  the  people  I  care  to  see.  I  know  exactly 
those  I  don't,  but  never  have  I  taken  more  kindly 
to  those  I  do — and  with  them  intercourse  has  a  fine 
intimacy  that  is  beyond  anything  of  the  past.  But 
we  are  very  mature — and  that  is  part  of  the  har 
mony — the  young  and  the  youngish  are  all  away 
getting  killed,  so  far  as  they  are  males;  and  so  far 
as  they  are  females,  wives  and  fiancees  and  sisters, 
they  are  occupied  with  being  simply  beyond  praise. 
The  mothers  are  pure  Roman  and  it's  all  tremen 
dously  becoming  to  every  one.  There  are  really 
no  fiancees  by  the  way — the  young  men  get  home 
for  three  days  and  are  married — then  off  into  the 
absolute  Hell  of  it  again.  But  good-night  now. 
It  was  truly  exquisite  of  you  to  write  to  me.  Do 
feel,  and  tell  Cabot  that  I  take  the  liberty  of  ask 
ing  him  to  feel,  how  thoroughly  I  count  on  all  your 
house.  It's  a  luxury  for  me  to  know  how  I  can  on 
Constance.  Yours,  dear  Mrs.  Lodge,  ever  and 
ever  so  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


AET.  71     TO  MRS.  WILLIAM  JAMES          449 


To  Mrs.  William  James. 

H.  J.'s  eldest  nephew  was  at  this  time  occupied  with 
relief  work  in  Belgium. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

Feb.  20th,  1915. 

Dearest  Alice, 

...  Of  course  our  great  (family)  public 
fact  is  Harry's  continuously  inscrutable  and  un- 
seizable  activity  here.  "Here"  I  say,  without 
knowing  in  the  least  where  he  now  is — and  the 
torment  of  his  spending  all  this  time  on  this  side 
of  the  sea,  and  of  one's  utter  loss  of  him  in  con 
sequence,  is  really  quite  dreadful.  .  .  .  England 
is  splendid,  undisturbed  and  undismayed  by  the 
savage  fury  and  the  roaring  mad-bull  "policy"  of 
Germany's  mine-and-torpedo  practice  against  all 
the  nations  of  the  earth,  or  rather  of  the  sea — 
though  of  course  there  will  be  a  certain  number  of 
disasters,  and  it  will  probably  be  on  neutrals  that 
most  of  these  will  fall. 

Feb.  22nd,  p.m.  I  had  to  break  this  off  two 
nights  ago  and  since  then  that  remark  has  been 
signally  confirmed — three  neutral  ships  have  been 
sunk  by  mines  and  torpedoes,  and  one  of  these  we 
learn  this  a.m.  is  an  American  cargo-boat.  I  don't 
suppose  anything  particular  will  "happen"  for 
you  all  with  Germany  because  of  this  incident 
alone  (the  crew  were  saved;)  yet  it  can  hardly  im 
prove  relations,  and  she  is  sure  to  repeat  the  injury 
in  some  form,  promptly,  and  then  the  fat  will  be 
on  the  fire.  Mr.  Roosevelt  is  far  from  being  dear 
to  me,  but  I  can't  not  agree  with  his  contention 
that  the  U.S.'s  sitting  down  in  meekness  and  silence 
under  the  German  repudiation  of  every  engage 
ment  she  solemnly  took  with  us,  as  the  initiatory 


450       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 

power  in  the  Hague  convention,  constitutes  an  un 
speakable  precedent,  and  makes  us  a  deplorable 
figure. 

Meanwhile  I  find  it  a  real  uplifting  privilege  to 
live  in  an  air  so  unterrorized  as  that  of  this  coun 
try,  and  to  feel  what  confidence  we  insuperably 
feel  in  the  big  sea-genius,  let  alone  the  huge  sea- 
resources,  of  this  people.  It  is  a  great  experience. 
I  mean  the  whole  process  of  life  here  is  now — even 
if  it  does  so  abound  in  tragedy  and  pity,  such  as 
one  can  often  scarcely  face.  But  there  is  too  much 
of  all  that  to  say — and  all  I  intended  was  to  re 
mark  that  while  Germany  roars  and  runs  amuck 
the  new  armies  now  at  last  ready  are  being  oh  so 
quietly  transported  across  the  diabolised  Channel. 
The  quiet  and  the  steady  going  here,  amid  the 
German  vociferation,  is  of  itself  an  enormous — 
I  was  going  to  say  pleasure.  We  have  just  heard 
from  Burgess  of  the  arrival  of  his  regiment  at 
Havre — they  left  the  Tower  of  London  but  a  few 
days  ago.  ...  I  go  to-morrow  to  the  Protheros 
to  help  them  with  tea-ing  a  party  of  convalescent 
soldiers  from  hospital — Mrs.  J.  G.  Butcher,  like 
thousands,  or  at  least  hundreds,  of  other  people, 
sends  her  car  on  certain  afternoons  of  the  week  to 
different  hospitals  for  four  of  the  bettering  patients 
— or  as  many  as  will  go  into  it — and  they  are  con 
veyed  either  to  her  house  or  to  some  other  arranged 
with.  I  have  "met"  sets  of  them  thus  several 
times — the  "right  people"  are  wanted  for  them, 
and  nothing  can  be  more  interesting  and  admirable 
and  verily  charming  than  I  mostly  find  them.  The 
last  time  the  Protheros  had,  by  Mrs.  Butcher's 
car,  wounded  Belgians — but  to-morrow  it  is  to  be 
British,  whom  I  on  the  whole  prefer,  though  the 
Belgians  are  more  gravely  pathetic.  The  diffi 
culty  about  them  is  that  they  are  so  apt  to  know 
only  Flemish  and  understand  almost  no  French — 
save  as  one  of  them,  always  included  for  the  pur- 


AET.  71     TO  MRS.  WILLIAM  JAMES          451 

pose,  can  interpret.  I  had  to-day  to  luncheon  a 
most  decent  and  appreciative  little  sapper  in  the 
Engineers,  whom  I  originally  found  in  hospital 
and  whose  teeth  I  have  been  having  done  up  for 
him — at  very  reduced  military  rates!  There  is 
nothing  one  isn't  eager  to  do  for  them,  and  their 
gratitude  for  small  mercies,  excellent  stuff  as  they 
are,  almost  wrings  the  heart.  This  obscure  hero 
(a  great  athlete  in  the  running  line)  is  completely 
well  again  and  goes  in  a  day  or  two  back  to  the 
Front;  but  oh  how  they  don't  like  the  hellishness 
of  it  (that  is  beyond  all  conception,)  and  oh  how 
they  don't  let  this  make  any  difference!  Tremen 
dously  will  the  "people"  by  this  war — I  mean  by 
their  patience  of  it  and  in  it — have  made  good  their 
place  in  the  sun;  though  even  as  one  says  that  one 
recognizes  still  more  how  the  "upper  classes"  in 
this  country  and  the  others  have  poured  themselves 
unstintedly  out.  The  way  "society"  at  large,  in 
England,  has  magnificently  played  up,  will  have 
given  it,  I  think  it  will  be  found,  a  new  lease  of 
life.  However,  society,  in  wars,  always  does  play 
up — and  it  is  by  them,  and  for  them,  that  the  same 
are  mostly  made.  .  .  . 

Feb.  23rd.  Again  I  had  to  go  to  bed,  but  it's 
all  right  and  my  letter  wouldn't  in  any  case  have 
gone  to  you  till  to-morrow's  New  York  post. 
Meanwhile  not  much  has  happened,  thank  heaven, 
save  that  I  went  to  tea  with  little  Fanny  P.  and 
her  five  convalescents,  and  that  it  was  a  very  suc 
cessful  affair.  .  .  .  We  plied  them  with  edibles 
and  torrents  of  the  drinkable  and  they  expanded, 
as  always,  and  became  interesting  and  moving,  in 
the  warmth  of  civilization  and  sympathy.  Those  I 
had  on  either  side  of  me  at  table  were  men  of  the 
old  Army — I  mean  who  had  been  through  the 
Boer  War,  and  were  therefore  nigh  upon  forty, 
and  proportionately  more  soldatesques;  but  there 
is  nothing,  ever,  that  one  wouldn't  do  for  any  one 


452       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 

of  them;  they  become  at  once  such  children  of  his 
tory,  such  creatures  of  distinction.  .  .  . 
Ever  your  affectionate 

HENRY. 

To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

Mrs.  Wharton,  writing  to  describe  a  journey  she  had 
made  along  part  of  the  French  front,  had  mentioned  that 
a  staff-officer  at  Ste.  Menehould  had  read  some  of  her 
books,  and  had  shown  his  appreciation  by  facilitating  her 
visit  to  Verdun. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

March  5th,  1915. 
Dearest  Edith, 

How  can  I  welcome  and  applaud  enough 
your  splendid  thrilling  letter— in  which,  though 
it  gives  me  your  whole  spectacle  and  impression 
as  unspeakably  portentous,  I  find  you  somehow 
of  the  very  same  heroic  taille  of  whatever  it  was 
that  gave  the  rest  at  the  monstrous  maximum.  I 
unutterably  envy  you  these  sights  and  suffered 
assaults  of  the  maxima — condemned  as  I  am  by 
doddering  age  and  "mean"  infirmity  to  the  poor 
mesquins  minima,  when  really  to  find  myself  in 
closer  touch  would  so  fearfully  interest  and  inspire 
and  overwhelm  me  (as  one  wants  to  be  over 
whelmed.)  However,  since  my  ignoble  portion  is 
what  it  is,  the  next  best  thing  is  to  heap  you  on  the 
altar  of  sacrifice  and  gloat  over  your  overwhelmed- 
ness  and  demand  of  you  to  serve  me  still  more  and 
more  of  it.  On  this  I  even  insist  now  that  I  have 
tasted  of  your  state  and  your  substance — for  your 
impression  is  rendered  in  a  degree  so  vivid  and 
touching  that  it  all  (especially  those  vespers  in  the 
church  with  the  tragic  beds  in  the  aisles)  wrings 
tears  from  my  aged  eyes.  What  a  hungry  luxury 
to  be  able  to  come  back  with  things  and  give  them 


AET.  71  TO  MRS.  WHARTON  453 

then  and  there  straight  into  the  aching  voids:  do 
it,  do  it,  my  blest  Edith,  for  all  you're  worth: 
rather,  rather — "sauvez,  sauvez  la  France!"  Ah, 
je  la  sauverais  bien,  moi,  if  I  hadn't  been  ruined 
myself  too  soon!  .  .  .  Ce  que  c'est  for  you,  evi 
dently,  to  find  yourself  in  these  adventures,  like 
Ouida,  "the  favourite  reading  of  the  military." 
Well,  as  I  say,  do  keep  in  touch  with  your  public! 
I  stupidly  forgot  to  tell  Frederick  to  tell  you  not 
to  dream  of  returning  me  those  <£6.  0.  0  (all  he 
would  take,)  but  to  regard  them  as  the  contribu 
tion  I  was  really  then  in  the  very  nick  of  sending 
to  your  Beiges!  So  I  wired  you  a  day  or  two  ago 
to  that  effect,  after  too  much  wool-gathering,  and 
to  anticipate  absolutely  any  restitution.  It  made 
it  so  easy  a  sending.  Well  then  a  bientot — Oliver 
shamelessly  (not  asks,  but)  howls  for  more.  Yours 
all  devotedlier  than  ever, 

HENRY  JAMES. 

To  the  Hon.  Evan  Charteris. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

March  13th,  1915. 
My  dear  Evan, 

Your  letter  is  of  such  interest  and  beauty 
that  I  must  thank  you  for  it,  at  once.  Little  idea 
can  you  have  of  how  the  sense  of  your  where 
abouts,  your  visions,  impressions  and  contacts, 
thrills  me  and  makes  me  wonder,  enriches  and  ex 
cites  my  poor  little  private  life.  ...  In  short  you 
affect  me  as  gulping  down  great  mugfuls  of  ex 
perience,  while  I  am  sipping  that  compound  out  of 
a  liqueur-glass  not  a  quarter  full.  The  only  thing 
I  can  say  to  myself  is  that  I  can  live  too,  thank 
God,  by  my  friends'  experience,  when  I  hang 
about  them  in  imagination,  as  you  must  take  it 
from  me  that  I  do  about  you.  You  help  me  greatly 


454       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 


to  do  so  with  your  account  of  the  soupless  return 
of  hospitality  to  your  kind  French  harbourers  that 
you  had  been  bringing-off — and  this  in  particular 
by  your  mention  of  the  admirable  aspects  they, 
and  all  who  around  you  are  like  them,  present  to 
your  intelligent  English  eyes.  I  rejoice  in  all  ex 
pressions  and  testimonies  about  the  French,  won 
derful  and  genial  race;  all  generous  appreciation 
of  the  way  they  are  carrying  themselves  now  seems 
to  me  of  the  highest  international  value  and  im 
portance,  and,  frankly,  I  wish  more  of  that  found 
its  way  into  our  newspapers  here,  so  prodigiously 
(even  if  erratically)  copious  about  our  own  doings. 
We  ought  to  commend  and  commemorate  and  cele 
brate  them  —  our  Allies'  doings  —  more  publicly 
and  explicitly — but  the  want  of  imagination  here 
abouts  ( save  as  to  that  of — to  the  report  of — grand 
things  that  haven't  happened)  is  often  almost  a 
painful  impression.  I  find  myself  really  wonder 
ing  whether  people  can  do  without  it,  succeed  with 
out  it,  as  much  as  that!  One  meets  constant 
examples  of  a  sort  of  unpenetrated  state  which 
disconcert  and  rather  alarm.  However,  these  re 
marks  are  but  the  fruit  of  the  fact  that  something 
stirs  in  me  ever  so  deeply  and  gratefully,  almost 
to  the  point  of  a  pang,  at  all  rendering  of  justice 
and  homage  to  the  children  of  France!  Go  on 
being  charming  and  responsive  to  them — it  will  do 
us  good  as  well  as  do  them.  I  am  sure  their  (your 
particular  guests')  enjoyment  of  your  agitated 
dinner  was  exquisite. 

Very  interesting,  not  less,  your  picture  of  the 
blest  irreflection  and  absence  of  morbid  analysis 
in  which  you  are  living — in  face  of  all  the  possi 
bilities;  and  wondrous  enough  surely  must  be  all 
the  changes  and  lapses  of  importance  and  value, 
of  sensibility  itself,  the  difference  of  your  relation 
to  things  and  the  drop  out  of  some  relations  alto 
gether.  .  .  .  But  I  catch  in  your  remarks  the  sil- 


AET.  71  TO  THE  HON.  EVAN  CHARTERIS  455 

ver  thread  of  optimism,  not  bulging  out  but  subtly 
gleaming,  and  it  gives  me  no  end  of  satisfaction. 
A  few  gleams  have  lately  been  coming  to  me  other 
wise,  and  the  action  of  Neuve  Chapelle  (if  I  may 
rashly  name  it,)  which  we  have  reports  of  in  the 
papers,  is  I  suppose  the  one  you  speak  of  as  cheer 
ing.  The  great  thing  we  do  in  London,  however, 
is  to  strain  our  ears  for  the  thunder  of  the  Darda 
nelles,  which  we  even  feel  that  we  get  pretty  straight 
and  pretty  strong,  and  in  which  we  see  conse 
quences  the  most  tremendous,  verily  beyond  all 
present  utterance.  Nothing  in  all  the  war  has 
made  me  hang  on  it  in  such  suspense — though  we 
venture  even  almost  to  presume.  I  see  few  people 
— and  try  to  see  only  those  I  positively  want  to; 
whom,  par  exemple,  I  value  the  exchange  of  earn 
est  remarks  with  more  than  ever.  But  I  am  ill- 
conditioned  for  "telling"  you  things — and  indeed 
I  should  think  meanly  of  London  if  there  was  very 
much  to  tell.  A  few  nights  ago  I  dined  with 
Mervyn  O'Gorman,  my  rather  near  neighbour 
here,  and  met  a  youngish  and  exceedingly  interest 
ing,  in  fact  charming,  Colonel  Brancker,  just  bad 
from  the  front — both  of  which  high  aeronautic 
experts  you  probably  know.  I  mention  them  be 
cause  I  extracted  from  them  so  intense  a  thrill — 
drawing  them  out — for  they  let  me — on  the  sub 
ject  of  the  so  more  and  more  revealed  affinity  of 
the  British  temperament  with  that  of  the  conquer 
ing  airman — and  thereby  of  the  extent  to  which  the 
military,  or  the  energetic,  future  of  this  country 
may  be  in  the  air.  They  put  it  so  splendidly  that 
I  went  home  unspeakably  rejoicing  (it  may  "mean" 
so  much!)  and  as  if  myself  ponderously  soaring. 
But  what  am  I  ridiculously  remarking  to  youl 
The  great  point  I  wish  to  make  is  the  lively  wel 
come  I  shall  give  you  in  April — thank  you  for  that 
knowledge ;  and  that  I  am  ail-faithfully  yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


456       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 

To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

Dictated. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 
March  23rd,  1915. 

Chere  Madame  et  Confrere, 

Don't  imagine  for  a  moment  that  I  don't 
feel  the  full  horror  of  my  having  had  to  wait  till 
now,  when  I  can  avail  myself  of  this  aid,  to  ac 
knowledge,  as  the  poor  pale  pettifogging  term  has 
it,  the  receipt  from  you  of  inexpressibly  splendid 
bounties.  I  won't  attempt  to  explain  or  expatiate 
— about  this  abject  failure  of  utterance:  the  idea 
of  "explaining"  anything  to  you  in  these  days,  or 
of  any  expatiation  that  isn't  exclusively  that  of 
your  own  genius  upon  your  own  adventures  and 
impressions!  I  think  the  reason  why  I  have  been 
so  baffled,  in  a  word,  is  that  all  my  powers  of  being 
anything  else  have  gone  to  living  upon  your  two 
magnificent  letters,  the  one  from  Verdun,  and  the 
one  after  your  second  visit  there;  which  gave  me 
matter  of  experience  and  appropriation  to  which 
I  have  done  the  fullest  honour.  Your  whole  rec 
ord  is  sublime,  and  the  interest  and  the  beauty  and 
the  terror  of  it  all  have  again  and  again  called  me 
back  to  it.  I  have  ventured  to  share  it,  for  the 
good  of  the  cause  and  the  glory  of  the  connection 
(mine,)  with  two  or  three  select  others — this  I 
candidly  confess  to  you — one  of  whom  was  dear 
Howard,  absolutely  as  dear  as  ever  through  every 
thing,  and  whom  I  all  but  reduced  to  floods  of 
tears,  tears  of  understanding  and  sympathy.  I 
know  them  at  last,  your  incomparable  pages,  by 
heart — and  thus  it  is  really  that  I  feel  qualified 
to  speak  to  you  of  them.  With  the  two  sublimities 
in  question,  or  between  them,  came  of  course  also 
the  couple  of  other  favours,  enclosing  me,  press- 


AET.  71  TO  MRS.  WHARTON  457 

ing  back  upon  me,  my  attempted  contribution  to 
your  Paris  labour:  to  which  perversity  I  have  had 
to  bow  my  head.  I  was  very  sorry  to  be  so  forced, 
but  even  while  cursing  and  gnashing  my  teeth  I 
got  your  post-office  order  cashed,  and  the  money 
is,  God  knows,  assistingly  spendable  here!  An 
other  pang  was  your  mention  of  Jean  du  BremTs 
death.  ...  I  didn't  know  him,  had  never  seen 
him;  but  your  account  of  the  admirable  manner 
of  his  end  makes  one  feel  that  one  would  like  even 
to  have  just  beheld  him.  We  are  in  the  midst,  the 
very  midst,  of  histories  of  that  sort,  miserable  and 
terrible,  here  too;  the  Neuve  Chapelle  business, 
from  a  strange,  in  the  sense  of  being  a  pretty  false, 
glamour  at  first  flung  about  which  we  are  gradu 
ally  recovering,  seems  to  have  taken  a  hideous  toll 
of  officers,  and  other  distressing  legends  (legends 
of  mistake  and  confusion)  are  somehow  overgrow 
ing  it  too.  But  painful  particulars  are  not  what  I 
want  to  give  you — of  anything ;  you  are  up  to  your 
neck  in  your  own,  and  I  had  much  rather  pick  my 
steps  to  the  clear  places,  so  far  as  there  be  any 
such!  I  continue  to  try  and  keep  my  own  exist 
ence  one,  so  far  as  I  may — a  place  clear  of  the  last 
accablement,  I  mean :  apparently  what  it  comes  to 
is  that  it's  "full  up"  with  the  last  but  one. 

Wednesday,  24th.  I  had  to  break  this  off  yes 
terday — and  it  was  time,  apparently,  with  the 
rather  dreary  note  I  was  sounding:  though  I  don't 
know  that  I  have  a  very  larky  one  to  go  on  with 
to-day — save  so  far  as  the  taking  of  the  big  Aus 
trian  fortress,  which  I  can  neither  write  nor  pro 
nounce,  makes  one  a  little  soar  and  sing.  This 
seems  really  to  represent  something,  but  how  much 
I  put  forth  not  the  slightest  pretension  to  measure. 
In  fact  I  think  I  am  not  measuring  anything  what 
ever  just  now,  and  not  pretending  to — I  find 
myself,  much  more,  quite  consentingly  dumb  in  the 
presence  of  the  boundless  enormity;  and  when  I 


458       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 

wish  to  give  myself  the  best  possible  account 
of  this  state  of  mind  I  call  it  the  pious  attitude  of 
waiting.  Verily  there  is  much  to  wait  for — but 
there  I  am  at  it  again,  and  should  blush  to  offer 
you  in  the  midst  of  what  I  believe  to  be  your  more 
grandly  attuned  state,  such  a  pale  apology  for  a 
living  faith.  Probably  all  that's  the  matter  with 
one  is  one's  vicious  propensity  to  go  on  feeling 
more  and  more,  instead  of  less  and  less — which 
would  be  so  infinitely  more  convenient;  for  the 
former  course  puts  one  really  quite  out  of  relation 
to  almost  everybody  else  and  causes  one  to  circle 
helplessly  round  outer  social  edges  like  a  kind  of 
prowling  pariah.  However,  I  try  to  be  as  stupid 
as  I  can.  .  .  . 

All  the  while,  with  this,  I  am  not  expressing 
my  deep  appreciation  of  your  generous  remarks 
about  again  placing  Frederick  at  my  disposition. 
I  am  doing  perfectly  well  in  these  conditions  with 
out  a  servant ;  my  life  is  so  simplified  that  all  acute- 
ness  of  need  has  been  abated ;  in  short  I  manage — 
and  it  is  of  course  fortunate,  inasmuch  as  the  ques 
tion  would  otherwise  not  be  at  all  practically 
soluble.  No  young  man  of  military  age  would  I 
for  a  moment  consider — and  in  fact  there  are  none 
about,  putting  aside  the  physically  inapt  (for  the 
Army) — and  these  are  kept  tight  hold  of  by  those 
who  can  use  them.  Small  boys  and  aged  men  are 
alone  available — but  the  matter  has  in  short  not  the 
least  importance.  The  thing  that  most  assuages 
me  continues  to  be  dealing  with  the  wounded  in 
such  scant  measure  as  I  may;  such,  e.g.,  as  my 
having  turned  into  Victoria  Station,  yesterday 
afternoon,  to  buy  an  evening  paper  and  there  been 
so  struck  with  the  bad  lameness  of  a  poor  hobbling 
khaki  convalescent  that  I  inquired  of  him  to  such 
sympathetic  effect  that,  by  what  I  can  make  out, 
I  must  have  committed  myself  to  the  support  of 
him  for  the  remainder  of  his  days — a  trifle  on  ac- 


AET.  71  TO  MRS.  WHARTON  459 

count  having  sealed  the  compact  on  the  spot.  It 
all  helps,  however — helps  me\  which  is  so  much 
what  I  do  it  for.  Let  it  help  you  by  ricochet, 
even  a  little  too.  .  .  . 

.  .  .  Good-bye  for  now,  and  believe  me,  less 
gracelessly  and  faithlessly  than  you  might  well, 
your  would-be  so  decent  old 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Thomas  Sergeant  Perry. 

Dictated. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 
March  27th,  1915. 

My  dear  Thomas  and  my  dear  Lilla: 

Don't  resent  please  the  economic  form  of 
this  address,  the  frugal  attempt  to  make  one  grate 
ful  acknowledgment  serve  for  both  of  you:  for  I 
think  that  if  you  were  just  now  on  this  scene  itself 
there  isn't  a  shade  of  anxious  simplification  that 
you  wouldn't  at  once  perfectly  grasp.  The  effect 
of  the  biggest  and  most  appalling  complication  the 
world  has  ever  known  is  somehow,  paradoxically, 
as  we  used  to  say  at  Newport,  an  effect  of  simpli 
fication  too — producing,  that  is,  a  desperate  need 
for  the  same,  in  all  sorts  of  ways,  lest  one  be  sub 
merged  by  the  monster  of  a  myriad  bristles.  In 
short  you  do  understand  of  course,  and  how  it  is 
that  I  should  be  invidiously  writing  to  you,  Lilla, 
in  response  to  your  refreshing  favour  of  some  lit 
tle  time  since  (the  good  one  about  your  having 
shrieked  Rule  Britannia  at  somebody's  lecture,  or 
at  least  done  something  quite  as  vociferous  and 
to  the  point,  and  quite  as  helpful  to  our  sacred 
cause).  This  exclusive  benefit  should  you  be  en 
joying,  I  say,  hadn't  a  most  beneficial  letter  from 


460       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 

Thomas  come  to  me  but  yesterday,  crowning  the 
edifice  of  a  series  of  suchlike  bounties  which  he  has 
been  so  patient  over  my  poor  old  inevitable  silence 
about.  .  .  . 

You  inflame  me  so  scarcely  less,  Thomas,  with 
your  wonderful  statistics  of  the  American  theatre 
of  my  infancy,  a  propos  of  my  printed  prattle 
about  it,  that  I  could  almost  find  it  in  me  to  inquire 
from  what  published  source  it  is  you  recover  the 
ghostly  little  facts.  Are  they  presented  in  some 
procurable  volume  that  would  be  possible  to  send 
me?  I  ask  with  a  queer  dim  feeling  that  they 
might,  or  the  fingered  volume  might,  operate  as  a 
blest  little  diversion  from  our  eternal  obsession 
here.  I  have  reached  the  point  now,  after  eight 
months  of  that  oppression,  of  cultivating  small  arts 
of  escape,  small  plunges  into  oblivion  and  dissimu 
lation;  in  fact  I  am  able  to  read  again — for  ever 
so  long  this  power  was  almost  blighted — and  to 
want  to  become  as  dissociated  as  possible  from  the 
present. 

.  .  .  However,  I  didn't  mean  to  be  black — but 
only  pearly  grey,  as  your  letter  so  benevolently 
incites:  yours  too,  Lilla,  for  I  keep  you  together 
in  all  this.  And  I  don't,  you  see,  pretend  to  treat 
you  to  any  scrap  of  information  whatever — you 
have  more  of  the  public,  of  a  hundred  sorts,  than 
we,  I  guess:  and  the  private  mostly  turns  out,  in 
these  parts,  to  go  but  on  one  leg,  after  the  first 
fond  glimpse  of  it.  I  lunched  yesterday  with  the 
Prime  Minister,  on  the  chance  of  catching  some 
gleam  between  the  chinks — which  was  idiotic  of 
me,  because  it's  mostly  in  those  circles  that  the 
chinks  are  well  puttied  over.  The  nearest  I  came 
to  any  such  was  through  my  being  told  by  a  mem 
ber  of  the  P.M.'s  family,  whom  I  wouldn't  enable 
you  to  identify  for  the  world,  that  she  had  heard 
him  just  before  luncheon  say  to  three  or  four  mem 
bers  of  the  Government,  and  even  Cabinet,  gathered 


AET.  71  TO  THOMAS  SERGEANT  PERRY  461 

at  the  house,  that  something-or-other  was  "the 
most  awkward  situation  he  had  ever  found  him 
self  up  against":  with  the  comment  that  she,  my 
informant,  was  in  liveliest  suspense  to  know  what 
it  was  he  had  alluded  to  in  those  portentous  terms. 
Which  I  give,  however,  but  as  a  specimen  of  the 
bouche  chink,  not  of  the  gaping;  the  admirable  (as 
I  think  him,  quite  affectionately  think  him)  Master 
of  the  Situation  having  presently  joined  us  in  the 
most  unmistakeable  serenity  of  strength  and  cheer, 
and  the  riddle  remaining  at  any  rate  without  the 
least  pretence  of,  or  for  that  matter  need  of,  a  key. 
It  will  be  a  hundred  years  old  by  the  time  my 
small  anecdote  reaches  you,  and  not  have  le  moindre 
rapport  to  anything  that  in  the  least  concerns  us 
then.  But  I  must  tear  myself  from  you,  and  try 
withal  to  close  on  some  sublime  note — a  large 
choice  of  which  sort  I  feel  we  are  for  that  matter 
perfectly  possessed  of.  Well,  then,  a  friend  of 
much  veracity  told  me  a  couple  of  days  since  that 
a  friend  of  his  (I  admit  that  it's  always  a  friend 
of  somebody  else's,)  an  officer  of  the  upper  com 
mand,  just  over  for  a  couple  of  days  from  the 
Front,  had  spoken  to  him  of  the  now  enormous 
mass  of  the  French  and  British  troops  fronting  the 
enemy  as  covering,  in  dense  gatheredness  together, 
40  miles  of  the  land  of  France — I  don't  mean  in 
length  of  front,  of  course,  which  would  be  nothing, 
but  in  rearward  extent  and  just  standing,  so  to 
speak,  in  close-packed  available  spatial  presence. 
But  there  I  am  at  an  item — and  I  abjure  items, 
they  defy  all  dealing  with,  and  am  your  affec 
tionate  old 

HENRY  JAMES. 


462       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 


To  Edward  Marsh. 

A  copy  of  this  letter  was  sent  by  Mr.  Marsh  to  Rupert 
Brooke,  then  with  the  Dardanelles  Expeditionary  Force; 
it  reached  him  two  days  before  his  death.  The  letter 
refers  of  course  to  his  "1914"  Sonnets.  The  line  criti 
cised  in  the  first  sonnet  is:  "And  the  worst  friend  and 
enemy  is  but  death." 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 
March  28th,  1915. 

Dear  admirable  Eddie! 

I  take  it  very  kindly  indeed  of  you  to  have 
found  thought  and  time  to  send  me  the  publica 
tion  with  the  five  brave  sonnets.  The  circum 
stances  (so  to  call  the  unspeakable  matter)  that 
have  conduced  to  them,  and  that,  taken  together, 
seem  to  make  a  sort  of  huge  brazen  lap  for  their 
congruous  beauty,  have  caused  me  to  read  them 
with  an  emotion  that  somehow  precludes  the  criti 
cal  measure,  deprecates  the  detachment  involved 
in  that,  and  makes  me  just  want — oh  so  exceed 
ingly  much — to  be  moved  by  them  and  to  "like" 
and  admire  them.  So  I  do  greet  them  gladly,  and 
am  right  consentingly  struck  with  their  happy 
force  and  truth:  they  seem  to  me  to  have  come,  in 
a  fine  high  beauty  and  sincerity  (though  not  in 
every  line  with  an  equal  degree  of  those — which 
indeed  is  a  rare  case  anywhere;)  and  this  evening, 
alone  by  my  lamp,  I  have  been  reading  them  over 
and  over  to  myself  aloud,  as  if  fondly  to  test  and 
truly  to  try  them;  almost  in  fact  as  if  to  reach  the 
far-off  author,  in  whatever  unimaginable  condi 
tions,  by  some  miraculous,  some  telepathic  intima 
tion  that  I  am  in  quavering  communion  with  him. 
Well,  they  have  borne  the  test  with  almost  all  the 
firm  perfection,  or  straight  inevitability,  that  one 
must  find  in  a  sonnet,  and  beside  their  poetic 


AET.  71          TO  EDWARD  MARSH  463 

strength  they  draw  a  wondrous  weight  from  his 
having  had  the  right  to  produce  them,  as  it  were, 
and  their  rising  out  of  such  rare  realities  of  ex 
perience.  Splendid  Rupert- — to  be  the  soldier  that 
could  beget  them  on  the  Muse!  and  lucky  Muse, 
not  less,  who  could  have  an  affair  with  a  soldier 
and  yet  feel  herself  not  guilty  of  the  least  devia 
tion!  In  order  of  felicity  I  think  Sonnet  I  comes 
first,  save  for  a  small  matter  that  (perhaps  super 
fluously)  troubles  me  and  that  I  will  presently 
speak  of.  I  place  next  III,  with  its  splendid  first 
line;  and  then  V  ("In  that  rich  earth  a  richer  dust 
concealed!")  and  then  II.  I  don't  speak  of  No. 
IV — I  think  it  the  least  fortunate  (in  spite  of 
"Touched  flowers  and  furs;  and  cheeks!")  But  the 
four  happy  ones  are  very  noble  and  sound  and 
round,  to  my  sense,  and  I  take  off  my  hat  to  them, 
and  to  their  author,  in  the  most  marked  manner. 
There  are  many  things  one  likes,  simply,  and  then 
there  are  things  one  likes  to  like  (or  at  least  that 
I  do;)  and  these  are  of  that  order.  My  reserve 
on  No.  I  bears  on  the  last  line — to  the  extent,  I 
mean,  of  not  feeling  happy  about  that  but  before 
the  last  word.  It  may  be  fatuous,  but  I  am  won 
dering  if  this  line  mightn't  have  acquitted  itself 
better  as:  "And  the  worst  friend  and  foe  is  only 
death."  There  is  an  "only"  in  the  preceding  line, 
but  the  repetition  is — or  would  be — to  me  not  only 
not  objectionable,  but  would  have  positive  merit. 
My  only  other  wince  is  over  the  "given"  and 
"heaven"  rhyme  at  the  end  of  V;  it  has  been  so 
inordinately  vulgarized  that  I  don't  think  it  good 
enough  company  for  the  rest  of  the  sonnet,  which 
without  it  I  think  I  would  have  put  second  in  order 
instead  of  the  III.  The  kind  of  idea  it  embodies 
is  one  that  always  so  fetches  this  poor  old  Anglo- 
maniac.  But  that  is  all — and  this,  my  dear  Eddie, 
is  all.  Don't  dream  of  acknowledging  these  re 
marks  in  all  your  strain  and  stress — that  you 


464       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 

should  think  I  could  bear  that  would  fill  me  with 
horror.  The  only  sign  I  want  is  that  if  you  should 
be  able  to  write  to  Rupert,  which  I  don't  doubt 
you  on  occasion  manage,  you  would  tell  him  of 
my  pleasure  and  my  pride.  If  he  should  be  at  all 
touched  by  this  it  would  infinitely  touch  me.  In 
fact,  should  you  care  to  send  him  on  this  sprawl, 
that  would  save  you  other  trouble,  and  I  would 
risk  his  impatience.  I  think  of  him  quite  inordi 
nately,  and  not  less  so  of  you,  my  dear  Eddie,  and 
am  yours  all  faithfully  and  gratefully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 

P.S.  I  have  been  again  reading  out  V,  to 
myself  (I  read  them  very  well),  and  find  I  don't 
so  much  mind  that  blighted  balance! 


To  Edward  Marsh. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

March  30th,  1915. 
My  dear  Eddie, 

After  my  acknowledgment  of  the  beautiful 
things  had  gone  to  you,  came  in  your  note,  and 
now  your  quite  blessed  letter.  So  I  call  it  because 
it  testified  to  my  having  so  happily  given  you  that 
particular  pleasure  which  is  the  finest,  I  think,  one 
can  feel — the  joy  in  short  that  you  allude  to  and 
that  I  myself  rejoice  in  your  taking.  Splendid 
Rupert  indeed — and  splendid  you,  in  the  gener 
osity  of  your  emotion! 

I  had  stupidly  overlooked  that  preliminary 
lyric,  with  its  so  charming  climax  of  an  image. 
But  I  think — if  you  won't  feel  me  over-contentious 
for  it — that  your  reasoning  a  propos  of  "heaven, 
given"  &c.  rather  halts  as  to  the  matter  of  rhyme 
and  sense,  or  in  other  words  sense  and  poetic  ex- 


AET.  71  TO  EDWARD  MARSH  465 

pression.  Note  well  that,  poetically  speaking,  it's 
not  the  sense  that's  the  expression,  the  "rhyme" 
or  whatever,  but  those  things  that  are  the  sense, 
and  that  they  so  far  betray  it  when  they  find  for 
the  "only"  words  any  but  the  ideally  right  or  the 
(so  to  speak)  quietly  proud.  However,  I  didn't 
mean  to  plunge  into  these  depths  —  there  are  too 
many  other  depths  now;  I  only  meant  to  tell  you 
how  I  participate  and  to  be  yours,  in  this,  all 
faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Mrs.  Wharton. 

Lieut.  Jean  du  Breuil  de  St.  Germain,  distinguished 
cavalry  officer,  sociologist,  traveller,  was  killed  in  action 
near  Arras,  February  22,  1915. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

April  3rd,  1915. 
Dearest  Edith, 

Bounties  unacknowledged  and  unmeasured 
continue  to  flow  in  from  you,  for  this  a.m.,  after 
your  beautiful  letter  enclosing  your  copy  of  M. 
Seguier's  so  extraordinarily  fine  and  touching  one, 
arrive  your  two  livrcdsons  of  the  Revue  containing 
the  Dixmude  of  which  you  wrote  me.  It  is  quite 
heartbreakingly  noble  of  you  to  find  initiative  for 
the  rendering  and  the  remembering  of  such  services 
and  such  assurances,  for  I  myself  gaze  at  almost 
any  display  of  initiative  as  I  should  stare  at  a 
passing  charge  of  cavalry  down  the  Brompton 
Road — where  we  haven't  come  to  that  yet,  though 
we  may  for  one  reason  and  another  indeed  soon 
have  to.  One  is  surrounded  in  fact  here  with  more 
affirmations  of  energy  than  you  might  gather  from 
some  of  the  accounts  of  matters  that  appear  in 


466       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 

the  Times,  and  yet  the  paralysis  of  my  own  power 
to  do  anything  but  increasingly  and  inordinately 
jeel,  feel  in  a  way  to  make  communication  with 
almost  all  others  impossible,  they  living  and  think 
ing  in  such  different  terms — and  yet  that  paralysis, 
dis-je,  more  and  more  swallows  up  everything  but 
the  sore  and  sterile  unresting  imagination.  I  can't 
proceed  upon  it  after  your  sublime  fashion — and 
in  fact  its  aching  life  is  a  practical  destruction  of 
every  other  sort,  which  is  why  I  call  it  sterile.  But 
the  extent,  all  the  same,  to  which  one  will  have 
inwardly  and  darkly  and  drearily  and  dreadfully 
lived! — with  those  victims  of  nervous  horror  in 
the  ambulance-church,  the  little  chanting  country 
church  of  the  deadly  serried  beds  of  your  Verdun 
letter,  and  those  others,  the  lacerated  and  untended 
in  the  "fetid  stable-heat"  of  the  other  place  and 
the  second  letter — all  of  whom  live  with  me  and 
haunt  and  "inhibit"  me.  And  so  does  your  friend 
du  Breuil,  and  his  friend  your  admirable  corre 
spondent  (in  what  a  nobleness  and  blest  adequacy 
of  expression  their  feeling  finds  relief) — and  this 
in  spite  of  my  having  neither  known  nor  seen  either 
of  them;  Seguier  creating  in  one  to  positive  sick 
ness  the  personal  pang  about  your  friend  and  his, 
and  his  letter  making  me  feel  the  horror  it  does 
himself,  even  as  if  my  affection  had  something  at 
stake  in  that.  But  I  don't  know  why  I  treat  you 
thus  to  the  detail  of  one's  perpetually-renewed 
waste.  You  will  have  plenty  of  detail  of  your 
own,  little  waste  as  I  see  you  allowing  yourself. 

I  haven't  yet  had  the  hour  of  reading  your  Dix- 
mudes,  which  I  am  momentarily  reserying,  under 
some  other  pressure,  but  they  shall  not  miss  my 
fond  care — so  little  has  any  face  of  the  nightmare 
been  reflected  for  me  in  any  form  of  beauty  as  yet ; 
your  Verdun  letter  excepted.  This  keeps  making 
mere  blue-books  and  yellow-books  and  rapports 
the  only  reading  that  isn't,  or  that  hasn't  been, 


AET.  71  TO  MRS.  WHARTON  467 

below  the  level;  through  their  not  pretending  to 
express  but  only  giving  one  the  material.  As  it 
happens,  when  your  Revues  came  I  was  reading 
Georges  Ohnet  and  in  one  of  the  three  fascicules 
of  his  Bourgeois  de  Paris  that  have  alone,  as  yet, 
turned  up  here!  and  reading  him,  ma  foi,  with 
deep  submission  to  his  spell!  Funny  enough  to  be 
redevable  at  this  time  of  day  to  that  genius,  who 
has  come  down  from  the  cross  where  poor  van 
quished  Jules  Lemaitre  long  ago  nailed  him  up, 
as  if  to  work  fresh  miracles,  dancing  for  it  on 
Jules's  very  grave.  But  he  is  in  fact  extraordi 
narily  vivid  and  candid  and  amusing,  with  the 
force  of  an  angry  little  hunchback  and  a  perfect 
and  quite  gratifying  vulgarity  of  passion;  also, 
probably,  with  a  perfect  enormity  of  vente — in 
which  one  takes  pleasure. 

Easter  has  operated  to  clear  London  in  some 
thing  like  the  fine  old  way — we  would  really  seem 
to  stick  so  much  to  our  fine  old  ways.  I  don't 
truly  know  what  to  make  of  some  of  them — and 
yet  don't  let  yourself  suppose  from  some  of  such 
appearances  that  the  stiffness  and  toughness  of 
the  country  isn't  on  the  whole  deeper  than  any 
thing  else.  Such  at  least  is  my  own  indefeasible 
conviction  —  or  impression.  It's  the  queerest  of 
peoples — with  its  merits  and  defects  so  extraor 
dinarily  parts  of  each  other;  its  wantonness  of 
refusals — in  some  of  these  present  ways — such  a 
part  of  its  attachment  to  freedom,  of  the  indi 
vidualism  which  makes  its  force  that  of  a  collec 
tion  of  individuals  and  its  voluntaryism  of  such  a 
strong  quality.  But  it  won't  be  the  defects,  it  will 
be  the  merits,  I  believe,  that  will  have  the  last 
word.  Strange  that  the  country  should  need  a 
still  bigger  convulsion  —  for  itself;  it  does,  how 
ever,  and  it  will  get  it  —  and  will  act  under  it. 
France  has  had  hers  in  the  form  of  invasion — and 
I  don't  know  of  what  form  ours  will  yet  have  to 


468       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 

be.  But  it  will  come — and  then  we  shall — damp 
and  dense,  but  not  vicious,  not  vicious  enough, 
and  immensely  capable  if  we  can  once  get  dry. 
Voila  that  /  am,  however;  yet  with  it  so  yours, 

H.  J. 


To  Edward  Marsh. 

Rupert  Brooke  died  on  a  French  hospital-ship  in  the 
Aegean  Sea,  April  23,  1915,  while  serving  with  the  Royal 
Naval  Division. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

April  2Mb,  1915. 
My  dear  dear  Eddie, 

This  is  too  horrible  and  heart-breaking. 
If  there  was  a  stupid  and  hideous  disfigurement 
of  life  and  outrage  to  beauty  left  for  our  awful 
conditions  to  perpetrate,  those  things  have  been 
now  supremely  achieved,  and  no  other  brutal  blow 
in  the  private  sphere  can  better  them  for  making 
one  just  stare  through  one's  tears.  One  had 
thought  of  one's  self  as  advised  and  stiffened  as 
to  what  was  possible,  but  one  sees  (or  at  least  I 
feel)  how  sneakingly  one  had  clung  to  the  idea  of 
the  happy,  the  favouring,  hazard,  the  dream  of 
what  still  might  be  for  the  days  to  come.  But 
why  do  I  speak  of  my  pang,  as  if  it  had  a  right 
to  breathe  in  presence  of  yours? — which  makes  me 
think  of  you  with  the  last  tenderness  of  under 
standing.  I  value  extraordinarily  having  seen 
him  here  in  the  happiest  way  (in  Downing  St., 
&c.)  two  or  three  times  before  he  left  England, 
and  I  measure  by  that  the  treasure  of  your  own 
memories  and  the  dead  weight  of  your  own  loss. 
What  a  price  and  a  refinement  of  beauty  and 
poetry  it  gives  to  those  splendid  sonnets — which 
will  enrich  our  whole  collective  consciousness. 


AET.  72         TO  EDWARD  MARSH  469 

We  must  speak  further  and  better,  but  meanwhile 
all  my  impulse  is  to  tell  you  to  entertain  the  pang 
and  taste  the  bitterness  for  all  they  are  "worth" — 
to  know  to  the  fullest  extent  what  has  happened 
to  you  and  not  miss  one  of  the  hard  ways  in  which 
it  will  come  home.  You  won't  have  again  any 
relation  of  that  beauty,  won't  know  again  that 
mixture  of  the  elements  that  made  him.  And  he 
was  the  breathing  beneficent  man  —  and  now 
turned  to  this!  But  there's  something  to  keep 
too — his  legend  and  his  image  will  hold.  Believe 
by  how  much  I  am,  my  dear  Eddie,  more  than 
ever  yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  G.  W.  Prothero. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

April  24th,  1915. 
Dear  George, 

I  can't  not  thank  you  for  your  interesting 
remittances,  the  one  about  the  Salubrity  of  the 
Soldier  perhaps  in  particular.  That  paper  is  in 
deed  an  admirable  statement  of  what  one  is  mainly 
struck  with — the  only  at  all  consoling  thing  in  all 
the  actual  horror,  namely:  the  splendid  personal 
condition  of  the  khaki-clad  as  they  overflow  the 
town.  It  represents  a  kind  of  physical  redemp 
tion — and  that  is  something,  is  much,  so  long  as 
the  individual  case  of  it  lasts. 

As  for  the  President,  he  is  really  looking  up. 
I  feel  as  if  it  kind  of  made  everything  else  do  so! 
It  does  at  any  rate  your  all-faithful  old 

HENRY  JAMES. 


470       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 


To  Wilfred  Sheridan. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyiie  Walk,  S.W. 

May  31st,  1915. 
My  dear  dear  Wilfred, 

I  have  been  hearing  from  Clare  and  Mar 
garet,  and  writing  to  them — with  the  effect  on  my 
feelings  so  great  that  even  if  I  hadn't  got  their 
leave  to  address  you  thus  directly,  and  their  im 
pression  that  you  would  probably  have  patience 
with  me,  I  should  still  be  perpetrating  this  act, 
from  the  simple  force  of — well,  let  me  say  of  fond 
affection  and  have  done  with  it.  I  really  take  as 
much  interest  in  your  movements  and  doings,  in 
all  your  conditions,  as  if  I  were  Margaret  her 
self  —  such  great  analogies  prevail  between  the 
heavy  uncle  and  the  infant  daughter  when  follow 
ing  their  object  up  is  concerned.  I  haven't  kept 
my  thoughts  off  you  at  all — not  indeed  that  I  have 
tried! — since  those  days  early  in  the  winter,  in  that 
little  London  house,  where  you  were  so  admirably 
interesting  and  vivid  about  your  first  initiations 
and  impressions  and  I  pressed  you  so  hard  over 
the  whole  ground,  and  didn't  know  whether  most 
to  feel  your  acute  intelligence  at  play  or  your 
kindness  to  your  poor  old  gaping  visitor.  I've 
neglected  no  opportunity  of  news  of  you  since 
then,  though  I've  picked  the  article  up  in  every 
and  any  way  save  by  writing  to  you — which  my 
respect  for  your  worried  attention  and  general 
overstrain  forbade  me  to  regard  as  a  decent  act. 
At  the  same  time,  when  I  heard  of  your  having, 
at  Crowborough  or  wherever,  a  sharp  illness  of 
some  duration,  I  turned  really  sick  myself  for 
sympathy — I  couldn't  see  the  faintest  propriety 
in  that.  And  now  my  sentiments  hover  about  you 
with  the  closest  fidelity,  and  when  I  think  of  the 


AET.  72      TO  WILFRED  SHERIDAN  471 

stiff  experience  and  all  the  strange  initiations  (so 
to  express  my  sense  of  them)  that  must  have 
crowded  upon  you,  I  am  lost  in  awe  at  the  vision. 
For  you're  the  kind  of  defender  of  his  country  to 
whom  I  take  off  my  hat  most  abjectly  and  utter 
ly — the  thinking,  feeling,  refining  hero,  who  knows 
and  compares,  and  winces  and  overcomes,  and  on 
whose  lips  I  promise  myself  one  of  these  days  to 
hang  again  with  a  gape  even  beyond  that  of  last 
winter.  I  wish  to  goodness  I  could  do  something 
more  and  better  for  you  than  merely  address  you 
these  vain  words;  however,  they  won't  hurt  you  at 
least,  for  they  carry  with  them  an  intensity  of  good 
will.  I  won't  pretend  to  give  you  any  news,  for 
it's  you  who  make  all  ours — and  we  are  now  really 
in  the  way,  I  think,  of  doing  everything  conceiv 
able  to  back  you  up  in  that,  and  thereby  become 
worthy  of  you.  America,  my  huge  queer  country, 
is  being  flouted  by  Germany  in  a  manner  that  looks 
more  and  more  like  a  malignant  design,  and  if  this 
should  (very  soon)  truly  appear,  and  that  weight 
of  consequent  prodigious  resentment  should  be 
able  to  do  nothing  else  than  throw  itself  into  the 
scale,  then  we  should  be  backing  you  up  to  some 
purpose.  The  weight  would  in  one  way  and  an 
other  be  overwhelming.  But  these  are  vast  issues, 
and  I  have  only  wanted  to  give  you  for  the  mo 
ment  my  devotedest  personal  blessing.  Think  of 
me  as  in  the  closest  sustaining  communion  with 
Clare,  and  don't  for  a  moment  dream  that  I  pro 
pose —  I  mean  presume  —  to  lay  upon  you  the 
smallest  burden  of  notice  of  the  present  beyond 
just  letting  it  remind  you  of  the  fond  faith  of 
yours,  my  dear  Wilfred,  all  affectionately, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


472       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 


To  Edward  Marsh. 

The  volume  sent  by  Mr.  Marsh  was  Rupert  Brooke's 
19 H  and  other  Poems. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

June  6th,  1915. 
Dearest  Eddie, 

I  thank  you  ever  so  kindly  for  this  advance 
copy  of  Rupert's  volume,  which  you  were  right 
(and  blest!)  in  feeling  that  I  should  intensely 
prize.  I  have  been  spending  unspeakable  hours 
over  it — heart-breaking  ones,  under  the  sense  of 
the  stupid  extinction  of  so  exquisite  an  instrument 
and  so  exquisite  a  being.  Immense  the  generosity 
of  his  response  to  life  and  the  beauty  and  variety 
of  the  forms  in  which  it  broke  out,  and  of  which 
these  further  things  are  such  an  enriching  exhibi 
tion.  His  place  is  now  very  high  and  very  safe — 
even  though  one  walks  round  and  round  it  with  the 
aching  soreness  of  having  to  take  the  monument 
for  the  man.  It's  so  wretched  talking,  really,  of 
any  "place"  but  his  place  with  us,  and  in  our  eyes 
and  affection  most  of  all,  the  other  being  such  as 
could  wait,  and  grow  with  all  confidence  and  power 
while  waiting.  He  has  something,  at  any  rate,  one 
feels  in  this  volume,  that  puts  him  singularly  apart 
even  in  his  eminence — the  fact  that,  member  of  the 
true  high  company  as  he  is  and  poet  of  the  strong 
wings  (for  he  seems  to  me  extraordinarily  strong,) 
he  has  charm  in  a  way  of  a  kind  that  belong  to 
none  of  the  others,  who  have  their  beauty  and 
abundance,  their  distinction  and  force  and  grace, 
whatever  it  may  be,  but  haven't  that  particular 
thing  as  he  has  it  and  as  he  was  going  to  keep  on 
having  it,  since  it  was  of  his  very  nature — by  which 
I  mean  that  of  his  genius.  The  point  is  that  I 
think  he  would  still  have  had  it  even  if  he  had 


AET.  72  TO  EDWARD  MARSH  473 

grown  bigger  and  bigger,  and  stronger  and  stronger 
(for  this  is  what  he  would  have  done,)  and  thereby 
been  almost  alone  in  this  idiosyncrasy.  Even  of 
Keats  I  don't  feel  myself  saying  that  he  had  charm 
— it's  all  lost  in  the  degree  of  beauty,  which  some 
how  allows  it  no  chance.  But  in  Rupert  (not  that 
I  match  them!)  there  is  the  beauty,  so  great,  and 
then  the  charm,  different  and  playing  beside  it  and 
savouring  of  the  very  quality  of  the  man.  What  it 
comes  to,  I  suppose,  is  that  he  touches  me  most 
when  he  is  whimsical  and  personal,  even  at  the 
poetic  pitch,  or  in  the  poetic  purity,  as  he  perpet 
ually  is.  And  he  penetrates  me  most  when  he  is 
most  hauntingly  (or  hauntedly)  English — he  draws 
such  a  real  magic  from  his  conscious  reference  to 
it.  He  is  extraordinarily  so  even  in  the  War  son 
nets — not  that  that  isn't  highly  natural  too;  and 
the  reading  of  these  higher  things  over  now,  which 
one  had  first  read  while  he  was  still  there  to  be 
exquisitely  at  stake  in  them,  so  to  speak,  is  a  sort 
of  refinement  both  of  admiration  and  of  anguish. 
The  present  gives  them  such  sincerity — as  if  they 
had  wanted  it!  I  adore  the  ironic  and  familiar 
things,  the  most  intimately  English — the  Chilterns 
and  the  Great  Lover  (towards  the  close  of  which 
I  recognise  the  misprint  you  speak  of,  but  fortu 
nately  so  obvious  a  one — the  more  flagrant  the 
better — that  you  needn't  worry:)  and  the  Funeral 
of  Youth,  awfully  charming ;  and  of  course  Grant- 
chester,  which  is  booked  for  immortality.  I  revel 
in  Grantchester — and  how  it  would  have  made 
one  love  him  if  one  hadn't  known  him.  As  it  is 
it  wrings  the  heart !  And  yet  after  all  what  do  they 
do,  all  of  them  together,  but  again  express  how 
life  had  been  wonderful  and  crowded  and  fortu 
nate  and  exquisite  for  him? — with  his  sensibilities 
all  so  exposed,  really  exposed,  and  yet  never  tak 
ing  the  least  real  harm.  He  seems  to  me  to  have 
had  in  his  short  life  so  much  that  one  may  almost 


474       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 

call  it  everything.  And  he  isn't  tragic  now — he 
has  only  stopped.  It's  we  who  are  tragic — you 
and  his  mother  especially,  and  whatever  others; 
for  we  can't  stop,  and  we  wish  we  could.  The 
portrait  has  extreme  beauty,  but  is  somehow  dis 
connected.  However,  great  beauty  does  discon 
nect!  But  good-night — with  the  lively  sense  that 
I  must  see  you  again  before  I  leave  town — which 
won't  be,  though,  before  early  in  July.  I  hope 
you  are  having  less  particular  strain  and  stress 
and  am  yours  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Edward  Marsh. 

This  refers  to  a  photograph  of  Rupert  Brooke,  sent  by 
Mr.  Marsh,  and  to  the  death  of  his  friend  Denis  Browne, 
who  was  with  R.  B.  when  he  died.  A  letter  from  Browne, 
describing  Rupert  Brooke's  burial  on  the  island  of  Scyros, 
had  been  read  to  H.  J.  by  Mr.  Marsh  the  day  before 
the  following  was  written. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

June  13th,  1915. 
Dearest  Eddie, 

The  photograph  is  wonderful  and  beautiful 
— and  a  mockery!  I  mean  encompassed  with  such 
an  ache  and  such  a  pang  that  it  sets  up  for  one's 
vision  a  regularly  accepted,  unabated  pain.  And 
now  you  have  another  of  like  sort,  the  fruit  of  this 
horrible  time — which  I  presume  almost  to  share 
with  you,  as  a  sign  of  the  tenderness  I  bear  you. 
I  wish  indeed  that  for  this  I  might  once  have  seen 
D.  B.,  kind  brothering  D.  B.,  the  reading  by  you 
of  whose  letter  last  night,  under  the  pang  of  his 
extinction,  the  ghost  telling  of  the  ghost,  moved 
me  more  than  I  could  find  words  for.  He  brothered 
you  almost  as  much  as  he  had  brothered  Rupert 


AET.  72         TO   EDWARD   MARSH  475 

— and  I  could  almost  feel  that  he  practically  a 
little  brothered  poor  old  me,  for  which  I  so 
thank  his  spirit!  And  this  now  the  end  of  his 
brothering!  Of  anything  more  in  his  later  letter 
that  had  any  relation  you  will  perhaps  still  some 
day  tell  me.  .  .  . 

Yours  aU  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Compton  Mackenzie. 

Mr.  Mackenzie  was  at  this  time  attached  to  Sir  Ian 
Hamilton's  headquarters  with  the  Dardanelles  Expedi 
tionary  Force. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

June  18th,  1915. 
My  dear  Monty, 

All  this  while  have  I  remained  shamefully 
in  your  debt  for  interesting  news,  and  I  am 
plunged  deeper  into  that  condition  by  your  admi 
rable  report  from  the  Dardanelles  in  this  a.m.'s 
Times.  I  am  a  backward  being,  alas,  in  these  days 
when  so  much  is  forward;  our  public  anxieties 
somehow  strike  for  me  at  the  roots  of  letter-writ 
ing,  and  I  remain  too  often  dumb,  not  because  I 
am  not  thinking  and  feeling  a  thousand  things, 
but  exactly  because  I  am  doing  so  to  such  in 
tensity.  You  wrote  me  weeks  ago  that  you  had 
finished  your  new  novel — which  information  took 
my  breath  away  (I  mean  by  its  windlike  rush)  — 
and  now  has  come  thus  much  of  the  remainder  of 
the  adventure  for  which  that  so  grandly  liberated 
you  and  which  I  follow  with  the  liveliest  partici 
pation  in  all  your  splendid  sense  of  it  and  profit 
of  it.  I  confess  I  take  an  enormous  pleasure  in 
the  fact  of  the  exposure  of  the  sensitive  plate  of 
your  imagination,  your  tremendous  attention,  to 


476       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 

all  these  wonderful  and  terrible  things.  What 
impressions  you  are  getting,  verily — and  what  a 
breach  must  it  all  not  make  with  the  course  of 
history  you  are  practising  up  to  the  very  eve.  I 
rejoice  that  you  finished  and  snipped  off,  or  tucked 
in  and  wound  up,  something  self-contained  there 
— for  how  could  you  ever  go  back  to  it  if  you 
hadn't? — under  that  violence  of  rupture  with  the 
past  which  makes  me  ask  myself  what  will  have 
become  of  all  that  material  we  were  taking  for 
granted,  and  which  now  lies  there  behind  us  like 
some  vast  damaged  cargo  dumped  upon  a  dock 
and  unfit  for  human  purchase  or  consumption.  I 
seem  to  fear  that  I  shall  find  myself  seeing  your 
recently  concluded  novel  as  through  a  glass  darkly 
— which,  however,  will  not  prevent  my  immedi 
ately  falling  upon  it  when  it  appears ;  as  I  assume, 
however,  that  it  is  not  now  likely  to  do  before  the 
summer's  end — by  which  time  God  knows  what 
other  monstrous  chapters  of  history  won't  have 
been  perpetrated!  What  I  most  want  to  say  to 
you,  I  think,  is  that  I  rejoice  for  you  with  all  my 
heart  in  that  assurance  of  health  which  has  en 
abled  you  so  to  gird  yourself  and  go  forth.  If  the 
torrid  south  has  always  been  good  for  you  there 
must  be  no  amount  of  it  that  you  are  now  not  get 
ting — though  I  am  naturally  reduced,  you  see,  to 
quite  abjectly  helpless  and  incompetent  supposi 
tion.  I  hang  about  you  at  any  rate  with  all  sorts 
of  vows  and  benedictions.  I  feel  that  I  mustn't 
make  remarks  about  the  colossal  undertaking  you 
are  engaged  in  beyond  saying  that  I  believe  with 
all  my  heart  in  the  final  power  of  your  push.  As 
for  our  news  here  the  gist  of  that  is  that  we  are 
living  with  our  eyes  on  you  and  more  and  more 
materially  backing  you.  My  comment  on  you  is 
feeble,  but  my  faith  absolute,  and  I  am,  my  dear 
Monty,  your  more  than  ever  faithful  old 

HENRY  JAMES, 


AET.  72    TO  COMPTON  MACKENZIE         477 

P.S.  I  have  your  address,  of  many  integu 
ments,  from  your  mother,  but  feel  rather  that  my 
mountain  of  envelopes  should  give  birth  to  a  live 
lier  mouse! 


To  Henry  James,  junior. 

Dictated. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 
June  24th,  1915. 

Dearest  Harry, 

I  am  writing  to  you  in  this  fashion  even 
although  I  am  writing  you  "intimately";  because 
I  am  not  at  the  present  moment  in  very  good  form 
for  any  free  play  of  hand,  and  this  machinery  helps 
me  so  much  when  there  is  any  question  of  pressure 
and  promptitude,  or  above  all  of  particular  clear 
ness.  That  is  the  case  at  present — at  least  I  feel 
I  ought  to  lose  no  more  time. 

You  will  wonder  what  these  rather  portentous 
words  refer  to — but  don't  be  too  much  alarmed! 
It  is  only  that  my  feeling  about  my  situation  here 
has  under  the  stress  of  events  come  so  much  to 
a  head  that,  certain  particular  matters  further  con 
tributing,  I  have  arranged  to  seek  technical  (legal) 
advice  no  longer  hence  than  this  afternoon  as  to 
the  exact  modus  operandi  of  my  becoming  natural 
ised  in  this  country.  This  state  of  mind  probably 
won't  at  all  surprise  you,  however;  and  I  think 
I  can  assure  you  that  it  certainly  wouldn't  if  you 
were  now  on  the  scene  here  with  me  and  had  the 
near  vision  of  all  the  circumstances.  My  sense  of 
how  everything  more  and  more  makes  for  it  has 
been  gathering  force  ever  since  the  war  broke  out, 
and  I  have  thus  waited  nearly  a  whole  year;  but 
my  feeling  has  become  acute  with  the  information 
that  I  can  only  go  down  to  Lamb  House  now  on 


478       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1015 

the  footing  of  an  Alien  under  Police  supervision 
— an  alien  friend  of  course,  which  is  a  very  differ 
ent  thing  from  an  alien  enemy,  but  still  a  definite 
technical  outsider  to  the  whole  situation  here,  in 
which  my  affections  and  my  loyalty  are  so  in 
tensely  engaged.  I  feel  that  if  I  take  this  step  I 
shall  simply  rectify  a  position  that  has  become  in 
conveniently  and  uncomfortably  false,  making  my 
civil  status  merely  agree  not  only  with  my  moral, 
but  with  my  material  as  well,  in  every  kind  of  way. 
Hadn't  it  been  for  the  War  I  should  certainly  have 
gone  on  as  I  was,  taking  it  as  the  simplest  and 
easiest  and  even  friendliest  thing:  but  the  circum 
stances  are  utterly  altered  now,  and  to  feel  with 
the  country  and  the  cause  as  absolutely  and  ar 
dently  as  I  feel,  and  not  offer  them  my  moral  sup 
port  with  a  perfect  consistency  (my  material  is  too 
small  a  matter),  affects  me  as  standing  off  or 
wandering  loose  in  a  detachment  of  no  great  dig 
nity.  I  have  spent  here  all  the  best  years  of  my 
life — they  practically  have  been  my  life:  about  a 
twelvemonth  hence  I  shall  have  been  domiciled  un 
interruptedly  in  England  for  forty  years,  and 
there  is  not  the  least  possibility,  at  my  age,  and  in 
my  state  of  health,  of  my  ever  returning  to  the 
U.S.  or  taking  up  any  relation  with  it  as  a  coun 
try.  My  practical  relation  has  been  to  this  one 
for  ever  so  long,  and  now  my  "spiritual"  or  "senti 
mental"  quite  ideally  matches  it.  I  am  telling  you 
all  this  because  I  can't  not  want  exceedingly  to 
take  you  into  my  confidence  about  it — but  again  I 
feel  pretty  certain  that  you  will  understand  me 
too  well  for  any  great  number  of  words  more  to 
be  needed.  The  real  truth  is  that  in  a  matter 
of  this  kind,  under  such  extraordinarily  special 
circumstances,  one's  own  intimate  feeling  must 
speak  and  determine  the  case.  Well,  without  haste 
and  without  rest,  mine  has  done  so,  and  with  the 
prospect  of  what  I  have  called  the  rectification,  a 


AET.  72    TO  HENRY  JAMES,  JUNIOR         479 

sense  of  great  relief,  a  great  lapse  of  awkward 
ness,  supervenes. 

I  think  that  even  if  by  chance  your  so  judicious 
mind  should  be  disposed  to  suggest  any  reserves 
— I  think,  I  say,  that  I  should  then  still  ask  you 
not  to  launch  them  at  me  unless  they  should  seem 
to  you  so  important  as  to  balance  against  my  own 
argument  and,  frankly  speaking,  my  own  absolute 
need  and  passion  here;  which  the  whole  experience 
of  the  past  year  has  made  quite  unspeakably  final. 
I  can't  imagine  at  all  what  these  objections  should 
be,  however — my  whole  long  relation  to  the  coun 
try  having  been  what  it  is.  Regard  my  proceed 
ing  as  a  simple  act  and  offering  of  allegiance  and 
devotion,  recognition  and  gratitude  ( for  long  years 
of  innumerable  relations  that  have  meant  so  much 
to  me,)  and  it  remains  perfectly  simple.  Let  me 
repeat  that  I  feel  sure  I  shouldn't  in  the  least  have 
come  to  it  without  this  convulsion,  but  one  is  in 
the  convulsion  (I  wouldn't  be  out  of  it  either!) 
and  one  must  act  accordingly.  I  feel  all  the  while 
too  that  the  tide  of  American  identity  of  conscious 
ness  with  our  own,  about  the  whole  matter,  rises 
and  rises,  and  will  rise  still  more  before  it  rests 
again — so  that  every  day  the  difference  of  situa 
tion  diminishes  and  the  immense  fund  of  common 
sentiment  increases.  However,  I  haven't  really 
meant  so  much  to  expatiate.  What  I  am  doing  this 
afternoon  is,  I  think,  simply  to  get  exact  informa 
tion — though  I  am  already  sufficiently  aware  of 
the  question  to  know  that  after  my  long  existence 
here  the  process  of  naturalisation  is  very  simple 
and  short.  .  .  .  My  last  word  about  the  matter, 
at  any  rate,  has  to  be  that  my  decision  is  absolutely 
tied  up  with  my  innermost  personal  feeling.  I 
think  that  will  only  make  you  glad,  however,  and 
I  add  nothing  more  now  but  that  I  am  your  all- 
affectionate  old  Uncle, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


480       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 


To  Edmund  Gosse. 

H.  J.'s  four  sponsors  at  his  naturalisation  were  Mr. 
Asquith,  Mr.  Gosse,  Mr.  J.  B.  Pinker,  and  Mr.  G.  W. 
Prothero. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

June  25th,  1915. 

My  dear  Gosse, 

Remarkably  enough,  I  should  be  writing 
you  this  evening  even  if  I  hadn't  received  your  in 
teresting  information  about ,  concerning  whom 

nothing  perversely  base  and  publicly  pernicious 
at  all  surprises  me.  He  is  the  cleverest  idiot  and 
the  most  pernicious  talent  imaginable,  and  I  await 
to  see  if  he  won't  somehow  swing — ! 

But  il  ne  s'agit  pas  de  9a;  il  s'agit  of  the  fact 
that  there  is  a  matter  I  should  have  liked  to  speak 
to  you  of  the  other  day  when  you  lunched  here, 
yet  hung  fire  about  through  its  not  having  then 
absolutely  come  to  a  head.  It  has  within  these 
days  done  so,  and  in  brief  it  is  this.  The  force 
of  the  public  situation  now  at  last  determines  me 
'to  testify  to  my  attachment  to  this  country,  my 
fond  domicile  for  nearly  forty  years  (forty  next 
year,)  by  applying  for  naturalisation  here:  the 
throwing  of  my  imponderable  moral  weight  into 
the  scale  of  her  fortune  is  the  geste  that  will  best 
express  my  devotion — absolutely  nothing  else  will. 
Therefore  my  mind  is  made  up,  and  you  are  the 
first  person  save  my  Solicitor  (whom  I  have  had 
to  consult)  to  whom  the  fact  has  been  imparted. 
Kindly  respect  for  the  moment  the  privacy  of  it. 
I  learned  with  horror  just  lately  that  if  I  go  down 
into  Sussex  (for  two  or  three  months  of  Rye)  I 
have  at  once  to  register  myself  there  as  an  Alien 
and  place  myself  under  the  observation  of  the 
Police.  But  that  is  only  the  occasion  of  my  deci- 


AET.  72  TO  EDMUND  GOSSE  481 

sion — it's  not  in  the  least  the  cause.  The  disposi 
tion  itself  has  haunted  me  as  Wordsworth's  sound 
ing  cataract  haunted  Mm — "like  a  passion" — ever 
since  the  beginning  of  the  War.  But  the  point, 
please,  is  this:  that  the  process  for  me  is  really  of 
the  simplest,  and  may  be  very  rapid,  if  I  can  obtain 
four  honourable  householders  to  testify  to  their 
knowledge  of  me  as  a  respectable  person,  "speak 
ing  and  writing  English  decently"  etc.  Will  you 
give  me  the  great  pleasure  of  being  one  of  them? — 
signing  a  paper  to  that  effect?  I  should  take  it 
ever  so  kindly.  And  I  should  further  take  kindly 
your  giving  me  if  possible  your  sense  on  this 
delicate  point.  Should  you  say  that  our  admirable 
friend  the  Prime  Minister  would  perhaps  be  ap 
proachable  by  me  as  another  of  the  signatory  four? 
— to  whom,  you  see,  great  historic  honour,  not  to 
say  immortality,  as  my  sponsors,  will  accrue.  I 
don't  like  to  approach  him  without  your  so  quali 
fied  sense  of  the  matter  first — and  he  has  always 
been  so  beautifully  kind  and  charming  to  me.  I 
will  do  nothing  till  I  hear  from  you — but  his  signa 
ture  (which  my  solicitor's  representative,  if  not 
himself,  would  simply  wait  upon  him  for)  would 
enormously  accelerate  the  putting  through  of  the 
application  and  the  disburdening  me  of  the  Sussex 
"restricted  area"  alienship — which  it  distresses  me 
to  carry  on  my  back  a  day  longer  than  I  need.  I 
have  in  mind  my  other  two  sponsors,  but  if  I  could 
have  from  you,  in  addition  to  your  own  personal 
response,  on  which  my  hopes  are  so  founded,  your 
ingenious  prefiguration  (fed  by  your  intimacy 
with  him)  as  to  how  the  P.M.  would  "take"  my 
appeal,  you  would  increase  the  obligations  of 
yours  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


482       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 


To  J.  B.  Pinker. 

The  two  articles  here  referred  to,  "The  Long  Wards" 
and  "Within  the  Rim,"  were  both  eventually  devoted  to 
charitable  purposes. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

June  29th,  1915. 
My  dear  Pinker, 

I  am  glad  to  hear  from  you  of  the  condi 
tions  in  which  the  New  York  Tribune  representa 
tive  thinks  there  will  be  no  difficulty  over  the  fee 
for  the  article.  I  have  in  point  of  fact  during  the 
last  three  or  four  days  considerably  written  one — 
concerning  which  a  question  comes  up  which  I 
hope  you  won't  think  too  tiresome.  Making  up 
my  mind  that  something  as  concrete  and  "human" 
as  possible  would  be  my  best  card  to  play,  I  have 
done  something  about  the  British  soldier,  his 
aspect,  temper  and  tone,  and  the  considerations  he 
suggests,  as  I  have  seen  him  since  the  beginning 
of  the  war  in  Hospital;  where  I  have  in  fact  largely 
and  constantly  seen  him.  The  theme  lends  itself, 
by  my  sense,  much;  and  I  dare  say  I  should  have 
it  rather  to  myself — though  of  course  there  is  no 
telling!  But  what  I  have  been  feeling  in  the  con 
nection —  having  now  done  upwards  of  3000 
words — is  that  I  should  be  very  grateful  for  leave 
to  make  them  4000  (without  of  course  extension 
of  fee.)  I  have  never  been  good  for  the  mere 
snippet,  and  there  is  so  much  to  say  and  to  feel! 
Would  you  mind  asking  her,  in  reporting  to  her  of 
what  my  subject  is,  whether  this  extra  thousand 
would  incommode  them.  If  she  really  objects  to 
it  I  think  I  shall  be  then  disposed  to  ask  you  to 
make  some  other  application  of  my  little  paper  (on 
the  4000  basis;)  in  which  case  I  should  propose  to 
the  Tribune  another  idea,  keeping  it  down  abso- 


AET.  72  TO  J.  B.  PINKER  483 

lutely  to  the  3000.  (I'm  afraid  I  can't  do  less  than 
that.)  My  motive  would  probably  in  that  case  be 
a  quite  different  and  less  "concrete"  thing;  namely, 
the  expression  of  my  sense  of  the  way  the  Briton  in 
general  feels  about  his  insulation,  and  his  being  in 
it  and  of  it,  even  through  all  this  unprecedented 
stress.  It  would  amount  to  a  statement  or  picture 
of  his  sense  of  the  way  his  sea-genius  has  always 
encircled  and  protected  him,  striking  deep  into  his 
blood  and  his  bones ;  so  that  any  reconsideration  of 
his  position  in  a  new  light  inevitably  comes  hard  to 
him,  and  yet  makes  the  process  the  effective  develop 
ment  of  which  it  is  interesting  to  watch.  I  should 
call  this  thing  something  like  "The  New  Vision," 
or,  better  still,  simply  "Insulation":  though  I  don't 
say  exactly  that.  At  all  events  I  should  be  able  to 
make  something  interesting  of  it,  and  it  would  of 
course  inevitably  take  the  sympathetic  turn.  But 
I  would  rather  keep  to  the  thing  I  have  been  try 
ing,  if  I  may  have  the  small  extra  space.  .  .  . 
Believe  me  yours  ever, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Frederic  Harrison. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

July  3rd,  1915. 
My  dear  Frederic  Harrison, 

I  think  your  so  interesting  letter  of  the  other 
day  most  kind  and  generous — it  has  greatly  touched 
me.  Mrs.  Harrison  had  written  me  a  short  time 
before,  even  more  movingly,  and  with  equal  lib 
erality,  and  I  feel  my  belated  remembrance  of  you 
magnificently  recognised.  This  has  been  a  most 
healing  fact  for  me  in  a  lacerated  world.  How 
splendid  your  courage  and  activity  and  power,  so 


484       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 

continued,  of  production  and  attention !  I  am  sorry 
to  say  I  find  any  such  power  in  myself  much  im 
paired  and  diminished — reduced  to  the  shadow  of 
what  it  once  was.  All  relations  are  dislocated  and 
harmonies  falsified,  and  one  asks  one's  self  of  what 
use,  in  such  a  general  condition,  is  any  direction  of 
the  mind  save  straight  to  the  thing  that  most  and 
only  matters.  However,  it  all  comes  back  to  that, 
and  one  does  what  one  can  because  it's  a  part  of 
virtue.  Also  I  find  one  is  the  better  for  every  suc 
cessful  effort  to  bring  one's  attention  home.  I  have 
just  read  your  "English"  review  of  Lord  Eversley's 
book  on  Poland,  which  you  have  made  me  desire  at 
once  to  get  and  read — even  though  your  vivid  sum 
mary  makes  me  also  falter  before  the  hideous  old 
tragedy  over  which  the  actual  horrors  are  being  re- 
embroidered.  I  thank  you  further  for  letting  me 
know  of  your  paper  in  the  Aberdeen  magazine — 
though  on  reflection  I  can  wait  for  it  if  it's  to  be 
included  in  your  volume  now  so  soon  to  appear — 
I  shall  so  straightly  possess  myself  of  that.  As 
to  the  U.S.A.,  I  am  afraid  I  suffer  almost  more 
than  I  can  endure  from  the  terms  of  precautionary 
"friendship"  on  which  my  country  is  content  to  re 
main  with  the  author  of  such  systematic  abomina 
tions — I  cover  my  head  with  my  mantle  in  presence 
of  so  much  wordy  amicable  discussing  and  convers 
ing  and  reassuring  and  postponing,  all  the  while 
that  such  hideous  evil  and  cruelty  rages.  To  drag 
into  our  European  miseries  any  nation  that  is  so 
fortunate  as  to  be  out  of  them,  and  able  to  remain 
out  with  common  self-respect,  would  be  a  deplorable 
wish — but  that  holds  true  but  up  to  a  certain  line  of 
compromise.  I  can't  help  feeling  that  for  the  U.S. 
this  line  has  been  crossed,  and  that  they  have  them 
selves  great  dangers,  from  the  source  of  all  ours,  to 
reckon  with.  However,  one  fortunately  hasn't  to 
decide  the  case  or  appoint  the  hour — the  relation 
between  the  two  countries  affects  me  as  being  on 


AET.  72     TO  FREDERIC  HARRISON          485 

a  stiff  downward  slope  at  the  bottom  of  which  is 
rupture,  and  everything  that  takes  place  between 
them  renders  that  incline  more  rapid  and  shoves  the 
position  further  down.  The  material  and  moral 
weight  that  America  would  be  able  to  throw  into 
the  scale  by  her  productive  and  financial  power 
strikes  me  as  enormous.  There  would  be  no  ques 
tion  of  munitions  then.  What  I  mean  is  that  I  be 
lieve  the  truculence  of  Germany  may  be  trusted, 
from  one  month  or  one  week  to  another  now,  to 
force  the  American  hand.  It  must  indeed  be  help 
ful  to  both  of  you  to  breathe  your  fine  air  of  the 
heights.  The  atmosphere  of  London  just  now  is 
not  positively  tonic;  but  one  must  find  a  tone,  and 
I  am,  with  more  faithful  thought  of  Mrs.  Harrison 
than  I  can  express,  your  and  her  affectionate  old 
friend, 

HENRY  JAMES. 

To  H.  G.  Wells. 

H.  J.  was  always  inclined  to  be  impatient  of  the  art 
of  parody.  The  following  refers  to  an  example  of  it  in 
Mr.  Wells 's  volume,  Boon. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

July  6th,  1915. 
My  dear  Wells, 

I  was  given  yesterday  at  a  club  your  volume 
"Boon,  etc.,"  from  a  loose  leaf  in  which  I  learn  that 
you  kindly  sent  it  me  and  which  yet  appears  to  have 
lurked  there  for  a  considerable  time  undelivered. 
I  have  just  been  reading,  to  acknowledge  it  intelli 
gently,  a  considerable  number  of  its  pages — though 
not  all;  for,  to  be  perfectly  frank,  I  have  been  in 
that  respect  beaten  for  the  first  time — or  rather 
for  the  first  time  but  one — by  a  book  of  yours;  I 
haven't  found  the  current  of  it  draw  me  on  and 
on  this  time — as,  unfailingly  and  irresistibly,  be- 


486       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES      1915 

fore  (which  I  have  repeatedly  let  you  know.) 
However,  I  shall  try  again — I  hate  to  lose  any 
scrap  of  you  that  may  make  for  light  or  pleasure; 
and  meanwhile  I  have  more  or  less  mastered  your 
appreciation  of  H.  J.,  which  I  have  found  very 
curious  and  interesting  after  a  fashion — though 
it  has  naturally  not  filled  me  with  a  fond  elation. 
It  is  difficult  of  course  for  a  writer  to  put  him 
self  fully  in  the  place  of  another  writer  who  finds 
him  extraordinarily  futile  and  void,  and  who  is 
moved  to  publish  that  to  the  world — and  I  think 
the  case  isn't  easier  when  he  happens  to  have  en 
joyed  the  other  writer  enormously  from  far  back; 
because  there  has  then  grown  up  the  habit  of  tak 
ing  some  common  meeting-ground  between  them 
for  granted,  and  the  falling  away  of  this  is  like  the 
collapse  of  a  bridge  which  made  communication 
possible.  But  I  am  by  nature  more  in  dread  of 
any  fool's  paradise,  or  at  least  of  any  bad  mis- 
guidedness,  than  in  love  with  the  idea  of  a  security 
proved,  and  the  fact  that  a  mind  as  brilliant  as 
yours  can  resolve  me  into  such  an  unmitigated 
mistake,  can't  enjoy  me  in  anything  like  the  degree 
in  which  I  like  to  think  I  may  be  enjoyed,  makes 
me  greatly  want  to  fix  myself,  for  as  long  as  my 
nerves  will  stand  it,  with  such  a  pair  of  eyes.  I 
am  aware  of  certain  things  I  have,  and  not  less 
conscious,  I  believe,  of  various  others  that  I  am 
simply  reduced  to  wish  I  did  or  could  have;  so  I 
try,  for  possible  light,  to  enter  into  the  feelings 
of  a  critic  for  whom  the  deficiencies  so  prepon 
derate.  The  difficulty  about  that  effort,  however, 
is  that  one  can't  keep  it  up — one  has  to  fall  back 
on  one's  sense  of  one's  good  parts — one's  own 
sense;  and  I  at  least  should  have  to  do  that,  I 
think,  even  if  your  picture  were  painted  with  a 
more  searching  brush.  For  I  should  otherwise 
seem  to  forget  what  it  is  that  my  poetic  and  my 
appeal  to  experience  rest  upon.  They  rest  upon 


AET.  72  TO  H.  G.  WELLS  487 

my  measure  of  fulness — fulness  of  life  and  of 
the  projection  of  it,  which  seems  to  you  such  an 
emptiness  of  both.  I  don't  mean  to  say  I  don't 
wish  I  could  do  twenty  things  I  can't — many  of 
which  you  do  so  livingly;  but  I  confess  I  ask  my 
self  what  would  become  in  that  case  of  some  of 
those  to  which  I  am  most  addicted  and  by  which 
interest  seems  to  me  most  beautifully  producible. 
I  hold  that  interest  may  be,  must  be,  exquisitely 
made  and  created,  and  that  if  we  don't  make  it, 
we  who  undertake  to,  nobody  and  nothing  will 
make  it  for  us;  though  nothing  is  more  possible, 
nothing  may  even  be  more  certain,  than  that  my 
quest  of  it,  my  constant  wish  to  run  it  to  earth, 
may  entail  the  sacrifice  of  certain  things  that  are 
not  on  the  straight  line  of  it.  However,  there  are 
too  many  things  to  say,  and  I  don't  think  your 
chapter  is  really  inquiring  enough  to  entitle  you 
to  expect  all  of  them.  The  fine  thing  about  the 
fictional  form  to  me  is  that  it  opens  such  widely 
different  windows  of  attention;  but  that  is  just 
why  I  like  the  window  so  to  frame  the  play  and 
the  process! 

Faithfully  yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  H.  G.  Wells. 

With  reference  to  the  following  letter,  Mr.  Wells  kindly 
allows  me  to  quote  a  passage  from  his  answer,  dated 
July  8,  1915,  to  the  preceding:  "...  There  is  of  course 
a  real  and  very  fundamental  difference  in  our  innate  and 
developed  attitudes  towards  life  and  literature.  To  you 
literature  like  painting  is  an  end,  to  me  literature  like 
architecture  is  a  means,  it  has  a  use.  Your  view  was,  I 
felt,  altogether  too  prominent  in  the  world  of  criticism 
and  I  assailed  it  in  lines  of  harsh  antagonism.  And  writ 
ing  that  stuff  about  you  was  the  first  escape  I  had  from 
the  obsession  of  this  war.  Boon  is  just  a  waste-paper 


488       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 

basket.  Some  of  it  was  written  before  I  left  my  home  at 
Sandgate  (1911),  and  it  was  while  I  was  turning  over 
some  old  papers  that  I  came  upon  it,  found  it  expressive, 
and  went  on  with  it  last  December.  I  had  rather  be 
called  a  journalist  than  an  artist,  that  is  the  essence  of 
it,  and  there  was  no  other  antagonist  possible  than  your 
self.  But  since  it  was  printed  I  have  regretted  a  hundred 
times  that  I  did  not  express  our  profound  and  incurable 
difference  and  contrast  with  a  better  grace.  .  .  ."  In  a 
further  letter  to  Henry  James,  dated  July  13,  Mr.  Wells 
adds :  "I  don't  clearly  understand  your  concluding  phrases 
— which  shews  no  doubt  how  completely  they  define  our 
difference.  When  you  say  'it  is  art  that  makes  life,  makes 
interest,  makes  importance,'  I  can  only  read  sense  into  it 
by  assuming  that  you  are  using  'art'  for  every  conscious 
human  activity.  I  use  the  word  for  a  research  and  attain 
ment  that  is  technical  and  special.  .  .  ." 

Dictated. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

July  10th,  1915. 
My  dear  Wells, 

I  am  bound  to  tell  you  that  I  don't  think 
your  letter  makes  out  any  sort  of  case  for  the  bad 
manners  of  "Boon,"  as  far  as  your  indulgence  in 
them  at  the  expense  of  your  poor  old  H.  J.  is  con 
cerned — I  say  "your"  simply  because  he  has  been 
yours,  in  the  most  liberal,  continual,  sacrificial,  the 
most  admiring  and  abounding  critical  way,  ever 
since  he  began  to  know  your  writings:  as  to  which 
you  have  had  copious  testimony.  Your  compari 
son  of  the  book  to  a  waste-basket  strikes  me  as  the 
reverse  of  felicitous,  for  what  one  throws  into  that 
receptacle  is  exactly  what  one  doesn't  commit  to 
publicity  and  make  the  affirmation  of  one's  esti 
mate  of  one's  contemporaries  by.  I  should  liken 
it  much  rather  to  the  preservative  portfolio  or 
drawer  in  which  what  is  withheld  from  the  basket 
is  savingly  laid  away.  Nor  do  I  feel  it  anywhere 


AET.  72  TO  H.  G.  WELLS  489 

evident  that  my  "view  of  life  and  literature,"  or 
what  you  impute  to  me  as  such,  is  carrying  every 
thing  before  it  and  becoming  a  public  menace — so 
unaware  do  I  seem,  on  the  contrary,  that  my  prod 
ucts  constitute  an  example  in  any  measurable 
degree  followed  or  a  cause  in  any  degree  success 
fully  pleaded:  I  can't  but  think  that  if  this  were 
the  case  I  should  find  it  somewhat  attested  in  their 
circulation — which,  alas,  I  have  reached  a  very 
advanced  age  in  the  entirely  defeated  hope  of. 
But  I  have  no  view  of  life  and  literature,  I  main 
tain,  other  than  that  our  form  of  the  latter  in 
especial  is  admirable  exactly  by  its  range  and 
variety,  its  plasticity  and  liberality,  its  fairly  liv 
ing  on  the  sincere  and  shifting  experience  of  the 
individual  practitioner.  That  is  why  I  have  always 
so  admired  your  so  free  and  strong  application  of 
it,  the  particular  rich  receptacle  of  intelligences 
and  impressions  emptied  out  with  an  energy  of  its 
own,  that  your  genius  constitutes;  and  that  is  in 
particular  why,  in  my  letter  of  two  or  three  days 
since  I  pronounced  it  curious  and  interesting  that 
you  should  find  the  case  I  constitute  myself  only 
ridiculous  and  vacuous  to  the  extent  of  your  having 
to  proclaim  your  sense  of  it.  The  curiosity  and 
the  interest,  however,  in  this  latter  connection  are 
of  course  for  my  mind  those  of  the  break  of  per 
ception  (perception  of  the  veracity  of  my  variety) 
on  the  part  of  a  talent  so  generally  inquiring  and 
apprehensive  as  yours.  Of  course  for  myself  I  live, 
live  intensely  and  am  fed  by  life,  and  my  value, 
whatever  it  be,  is  in  my  own  kind  of  expression 
of  that.  Therefore  I  am  pulled  up  to  wonder  by 
the  fact  that  for  you  my  kind  (my  sort  of  sense 
of  expression  and  sort  of  sense  of  life  alike)  doesn't 
exist ;  and  that  wonder  is,  I  admit,  a  disconcerting 
comment  on  my  idea  of  the  various  appreciability 
of  our  addiction  to  the  novel  and  of  all  the  per 
sonal  and  intellectual  history,  sympathy  and  curi- 


490       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 

osity,  behind  the  given  example  of  it.  It  is  when 
that  history  and  curiosity  have  been  determined 
in  the  way  most  different  from  my  own  that  I 
want  to  get  at  them — precisely  for  the  extension 
of  life,  which  is  the  novel's  best  gift.  But  that  is 
another  matter.  Meanwhile  I  absolutely  dissent 
from  the  claim  that  there  are  any  differences 
whatever  in  the  amenability  to  art  of  forms  of 
literature  aesthetically  determined,  and  hold  your 
distinction  between  a  form  that  is  (like)  painting 
and  a  form  that  is  (like)  architecture  for  wholly 
null  and  void.  There  is  no  sense  in  which  archi 
tecture  is  aesthetically  "for  use"  that  doesn't  leave 
any  other  art  whatever  exactly  as  much  so;  and  so 
far  from  that  of  literature  being  irrelevant  to  the 
literary  report  upon  life,  and  to  its  being  made 
as  interesting  as  possible,  I  regard  it  as  relevant  in 
a  degree  that  leaves  everything  else  behind.  It  is 
art  that  makes  life,  makes  interest,  makes  impor 
tance,  for  our  consideration  and  application  of 
these  things,  and  I  know  of  no  substitute  whatever 
for  the  force  and  beauty  of  its  process.  If  I  were 
Boon  I  should  say  that  any  pretence  of  such  a 
substitute  is  helpless  and  hopeless  humbug;  but 
I  wouldn't  be  Boon  for  the  world,  and  am  only 
yours  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Henry  James,  junior. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

July  20th,  1915. 
Dearest  Harry, 

How  can  I  sufficiently  tell  you  how  moved 
to  gratitude  and  appreciation  I  am  by  your  good 
letter  of  July  9th,  just  received,  and  the  ready 
understanding  and  sympathy  expressed  in  which 


AET.  72    TO  HENRY  JAMES,  JUNIOR         491 

are  such  a  blessing  to  me!  I  did  proceed,  after 
writing  to  you,  in  the  sense  I  then  explained — the 
impulse  and  the  current  were  simply  irresistible; 
and  the  business  has  so  happily  developed  that  I 
this  morning  .received,  with  your  letter,  the  kindest 
possible  one  from  the  Home  Secretary,  Sir  John 
Simon,  I  mean  in  the  personal  and  private  way, 
telling  me  that  he  has  just  decreed  the  issue  of  my 
certificate  of  Naturalisation,  which  will  at  once 
take  effect.  It  will  have  thus  been  beautifully  ex 
pedited,  have  "gone  through"  in  five  or  six  days 
from  the  time  my  papers  were  sent  in,  instead  of 
the  usual  month  or  two.  He  gives  me  his  blessing 
on  the  matter,  and  all  is  well.  It  will  probably 
interest  you  to  know  that  the  indispensability  of 
my  step  to  myself  has  done  nothing  but  grow  since 
I  made  my  application;  like  Martin  Luther  at 
Wittenberg  "I  could  no  other,"  and  the  relief  of 
feeling  corrected  an  essential  falsity  in  my  posi 
tion  (as  determined  by  the  War  and  what  has 
happened  since,  also  more  particularly  what  has 
not  happened)  is  greater  than  I  can  say.  I  have 
testified  to  my  long  attachment  here  in  the  only 
way  I  could — though  I  certainly  shouldn't  have 
done  it,  under  the  inspiration  of  our  Cause,  if  the 
U.S.A.  had  done  it  a  little  more  for  me.  Then  I 
should  have  thrown  myself  back  on  that  and  been 
content  with  it;  but  as  this,  at  the  end  of  a  year, 
hasn't  taken  place,  I  have  had  to  act  for  myself, 
and  I  go  so  far  as  quite  to  think,  I  hope  not  fatu 
ously,  that  I  shall  have  set  an  example  and  shown 
a  little  something  of  the  way.  But  enough — 
there  it  is!  .  .  . 

Ever  your  affectionate  old  British  Uncle, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


492       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 


To  Edmund  Gosse. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

July  26th,  1915. 

My  dear  Gosse, 

Your  good  letter  makes  me  feel  that  you 
will  be  interested  to  know  that  since  4.30  this  after 
noon  I  have  been  able  to  say  Civis  Britannicus 
sum!  My  Certificate  of  Naturalisation  was  re 
ceived  by  my  Solicitor  this  a.m.,  and  a  few  hours 
ago  I  took  the  Oath  of  Allegiance,  in  his  office, 
before  a  Commissioner.  pThe  odd  thing  is  that 
nothing  seems  to  have  happened  and  that  I  don't 
feel  a  bit  different;  so  that  I  see  not  at  all  how 
associated  I  have  become,  but  that  I  was  really  too 
associated  before  for  any  nominal  change  to  matter. 
The  process  has  only  shown  me  what  I  virtually 
was — so  that  it's  rather  disappointing  in  respect 
to  acute  sensation.  I  haven't  any,  I  blush  to  con 
fess!  .  .  . 

I  thank  you  enormously  for  your  confidential 
passage,  which  is  most  interesting  and  heartening. 
.  .  .  And  let  me  mention  in  exchange  for  your 
confidence  that  a  friend  told  me  this  afternoon 
that  he  had  been  within  a  few  days  talking  with 

,  one  of  the  American  naval  attaches,  whose 

competence  he  ranks  high  and  to  whom  he  had  put 
some  question  relative  to  the  naval  sense  of  the 
condition  of  these  islands.  To  which  the  reply  had 
been:  "You  may  take  it  from  me  that  Eng 
land  is  absolutely  impregnable  and  invincible" — 
and repeated  over — "impregnable  and  invin 
cible  !"  Which  kind  of  did  me  good. 

Let  me  come  up  and  sit  on  your  terrace  some 
near  August  afternoon — I  can  always  be  rung  up, 


AET.  72  TO  EDMUND  GOSSE  493 

you  know:  I  like  it — and  believe  me  yours  and 
your  wife's  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  John  S.  Sargent. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

July  30th,  1915. 

My  dear  John, 

I  am  delighted  to  hear  from  you  that  you 
are  writing  and  sending  to  Mrs.  Wharton  in  the 
good  sense  you  mention.  It  will  give  her  the 
greatest  pleasure  and  count  enormously  for  her 
undertaking. 

Yes,  I  daresay  many  Americans  will  be  shocked 
at  my  "step";  so  many  of  them  appear  in  these 
days  to  be  shocked  at  everything  that  is  not  a 
reiterated  blandishment  and  slobberation  of  Ger 
many,  with  recalls  of  ancient  "amity"  and  that 
sort  of  thing,  by  our  Government.  I  waited  long 
months,  watch  in  hand,  for  the  latter  to  show  some 
sign  of  intermitting  these  amiabilities  to  such  an 
enemy — the  very  smallest  would  have  sufficed  for 
me  to  throw  myself  back  upon  it.  But  it  seemed 
never  to  come,  and  the  misrepresentation  of  my 
attitude  becoming  at  last  to  me  a  thing  no  longer 
to  be  borne,  I  took  action  myself.  It  would  really 
have  been  so  easy  for  the  U.S.  to  have  "kept"  (if 
they  had  cared  to!)  yours  all  faithfully, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


494       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 


To  Wilfred  Sheridan. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

Aug.  7th,  1915. 
Dearest  Wilfred, 

I  have  a  brave  letter  from  you  which  is  too 
many  days  old — and  the  reason  of  that  is  that  I 
became  some  fortnight  ago  a  British  subject. 
You  may  perhaps  not  have  been  aware  that  I 
wasn't  one — it  showed,  I  believe,  so  little;  but 
I  had  in  fact  to  do  things,  of  no  great  elaboration, 
to  take  on  the  character  and  testify  to  my  fond 
passion  for  the  cause  for  which  you  are  making 
so  very  much  grander  still  a  demonstration;  so 
that  now  at  any  rate  civis  Britannicus  sum,  and 
there's  no  mistake  about  it.  Well,  the  point  is  that 
this  absolutely  natural  and  inevitable  offer  of  my 
allegiance  —  a  poor  thing  but  my  own  —  and  the 
amiable  acceptance  of  it  by  the  powers  to  which  I 
applied,  have  drawn  down  on  my  devoted  head  an 
avalanche  of  letters,  the  friendliest  and  most  wel 
coming,  beneath  which  I  still  lie  gasping.  They 
have  unspeakably  touched  and  justified  me,  but  I 
brush  them  all  aside  to-night,  few  of  them  as  I  have 
in  proportion  been  able  yet  to  answer,  in  order 
to  tell  you  that  their  effect  upon  me  all  together 
isn't  a  patch  on  the  pride  and  pleasure  I  have  in 
hearing  from  you,  and  that  I  find  your  ability  to 
write  to  me,  and  your  sweet  care  to  do  so,  in  your 
fantastic  conditions,  the  most  wonderful  and  beau 
tiful  thing  that  has  ever  happened.  Dear  and 
delightful  to  me  is  the  gallant  good  humour  of  your 
letter,  which  makes  me  take  what  you  tell  me  as 
if  I  were  quite  monstrously  near  you.  One  doesn't 
know  what  to  say  or  do  in  presence  of  the  general 
and  particular  Irish  perversity  and  unspeakability 
(as  your  vivid  page  reflects  it;)  that  is,  rather, 


AET.  72      TO  WILFRED  SHERIDAN  495 

nobody  knows,  to  any  good  effect,  but  yourself— 
it  makes  me  so  often  ask  if  it  isn't,  when  all's  said 
and  done  and  it  has  extorted  the  tribute  of  our 
grin,  much  more  trouble  than  it's  worth,  or  ever 
can  be,  and  in  short  too,  quite  too,  finally  damning 
and  discouraging.  However,  I  am  willing  it 
should  display  its  grace  while  you  are  there  to  give 
them,  roundabout  you,  your  exquisite  care,  and  I 
can  fall  back  on  my  sense  of  your  rare  psychologic 
intelligence.  Your  "Do  write  to  me"  goes  to  my 
heart,  and  your  "I  don't  think  the  Russian  affair 
as  bad  as  it  seems"  goes  to  my  head — even  if  it 
now  be  seeming  pretty  bad  to  us  here.  But  there's 
comfort  in  its  having  apparently  cost  the  enemy, 
damn  his  soul  to  hell,  enormously,  and  still  being 
able  to  do  so  and  to  keep  on  leaving  him  not  at  all 
at  his  ease.  I  believe  in  that  vast  sturdy  people 
quand  meme — though  heaven  save  us  all  from 
cheap  optimism.  I  scarce  know  what  to  say  to 
you  about  things  "here,"  unless  it  be  that  I  hold 
we  are  not  really  in  the  least  such  fools  as  we 
mostly  seem  bent  on  appearing  to  the  world,  and 
that  on  the  day  when  we  cease  giving  the  most 
fantastic  account  of  ourselves  possible  by  tongue 
and  pen,  on  that  day  there  will  be  fairly  something 
the  matter  with  us  and  we  shall  be  false  to  our  re 
markably  queer  genius.  Our  genius  is,  and  ever 
has  been,  to  insist  urbi  et  orbi  that  we  live  by  mud 
dle,  and  by  muddle  only — while,  all  the  while,  our 
native  character  is  never  really  abjuring  its  stout 
ness  or  its  capacity  for  action.  We  have  been 
stout  from  the  most  ancient  days,  and  are  not  a 
bit  less  so  than  ever — only  we  should  do  better  if 
we  didn't  give  so  much  time  to  writing  to  the 
papers  that  we  are  impossible  and  inexcusable. 
That  is,  or  seems  to  be,  queerly  connected  with  our 
genius  for  being  at  all — so  that  at  times  I  hope  I 
shall  never  see  it  foregone:  it's  the  mantle  over 
which  the  country  truly  forges  its  confidence  and 


496       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 

acts  out  its  faith.  But  the  night  wanes  and  the 
small  hours  are  literally  upon  me — their  smallness 
even  diminishes.  I  am  sticking  to  town,  as  you 
see — I  find  I  don't  yearn  to  eat  my  heart  out,  so 
to  speak,  all  alone  in  the  Sussex  sequestration. 
So  I  keep  lending  my  little  house  at  Rye  to  friends 
and  finding  company  in  the  mild  hum  of  water 
side  Chelsea.  The  hum  of  London  is  mild  alto 
gether,  and  the  drop  of  the  profane  life  absolute — 
for  I  don't  call  the  ceaseless  and  ubiquitous  mili 
tary  footfall  (not  football!)  profane,  and  all  this 
quarter  of  the  town  simply  bristles  with  soldiers 
and  for  the  most  part  extremely  good-looking  ones. 
I  really  think  we  must  be  roping  them  in  in  much 
greater  numbers  than  we  allow  when  we  write  to 
the  Times — otherwise  I  don't  know  what  we  mean 
by  so  many.  Goodnight,  my  dear,  dear  boy.  I 
hope  you  have  harmonious  news  of  Clare — her 
father  has  just  welcomed  me  in  the  most  genial 
way  to  the  national  fold.  I  haven't  lately  written 
to  her,  because  in  the  conditions  I  have  absolutely 
nothing  to  say  to  her  but  that  I  feel  her  to  be  in 
perfection  the  warrior's  bride — and  she  knows 
that. 

Yours  and  hers,  dearest  Wilfred,  all  devotedly, 

HENEY  JAMES. 


To  Edmund  Gosse. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

August  25th,  1915. 
My  dear  Gosse, 

I  have  had  a  bad  sick  week,  mostly  in  bed 
— with  putting  pen  to  paper  quite  out  of  my 
power:  otherwise  I  should  sooner  have  thanked 
you  for  the  so  generous  spirit  of  that  letter,  and 
told  you,  with  emotion,  how  much  it  has  touched 


AET.  72  TO  EDMUND  GOSSE  497 

me.  I  am  really  more  overcome  than  I  can  say 
by  your  having  been  able  to  indulge  in  such  free 
dom  of  mind  and  grace  of  speculation,  during 
these  dark  days,  on  behalf  of  my  poor  old  rather 
truncated  edition,  in  fact  entirely  frustrated  one 
— which  has  the  grotesque  likeness  for  me  of  a  sort 
of  miniature  Ozymandias  of  Egypt  ("look  on  my 
works,  ye  mighty,  and  despair!") — round  which 
the  lone  and  level  sands  stretch  further  away  than 
ever.  It  is  indeed  consenting  to  be  waved  aside  a 
little  into  what  was  once  blest  literature  to  so  much 
as  answer  the  question  you  are  so  handsomely  im 
pelled  to  make — but  my  very  statement  about  the 
matter  can  only  be,  alas,  a  melancholy,  a  blighted 
confusion.  That  Edition  has  been,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  profit  either  to  the  publishers  or  to  my 
self,  practically  a  complete  failure ;  vaguely  speak 
ing,  it  doesn't  sell — that  is,  my  annual  report  of 
what  it  does — the  whole  24  vols. — in  this  country 
amounts  to  about  £25  from  the  Macmillans;  and 
the  ditto  from  the  Scribners  in  the  U.S.  to  very 
little  more.  I  am  past  all  praying  for  anywhere; 
I  remain  at  my  age  (which  you  know,)  and  after 
my  long  career,  utterly,  insurmountably,  unsale 
able.  And  the  original  preparation  of  that  col 
lective  and  selective  series  involved  really  the 
extremity  of  labour — all  my  "earlier"  things — of 
which  the  Bostonians  would  have  been,  if  included, 
one — were  so  intimately  and  interestingly  revised. 
The  edition  is  from  that  point  of  view  really  a 
monument  (like  Ozymandias)  which  has  never  had 
the  least  intelligent  critical  justice  done  it — or  any 
sort  of  critical  attention  at  all  paid  it — and  the 
artistic  problem  involved  in  my  scheme  was  a  deep 
and  exquisite  one,  and  moreover  was,  as  I  held, 
very  effectively  solved.  Only  it  took  such  time— 
and  such  taste — in  other  words  such  aesthetic 
light.  No  more  commercially  thankless  job  of  the 
literary  order  was  (Prefaces  and  all — tliey  of  a 


498       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 

thanklessness!)  accordingly  ever  achieved.  The 
immediate  inclusion  of  the  Bostonians  was  rather 
deprecated  by  the  publishers  (the  Scribners,  who 
were  very  generally  and  in  a  high  degree  appre 
ciative:  I  make  no  complaint  of  them  at  all!) — 
and  there  were  reasons  for  which  I  also  wanted  to 
wait :  we  always  meant  that  that  work  should 
eventually  come  in.  Revision  of  it  loomed  pecul 
iarly  formidable  and  time-consuming  (for  intrinsic 
reasons,)  and  as  other  things  were  more  pressing 
and  more  promptly  feasible  I  allowed  it  to  stand 
over — with  the  best  intentions,  and  also  in  com 
pany  with  a  small  number  more  of  provisional 
omissions.  But  by  this  time  it  had  stood  over, 
disappointment  had  set  in;  the  undertaking  had 
begun  to  announce  itself  as  a  virtual  failure,  and 
we  stopped  short  where  we  were — that  is  when  a 
couple  of  dozen  volumes  were  out.  From  that  mo 
ment,  some  seven  or  eight  years  ago,  nothing  what 
ever  has  been  added  to  the  series — and  there  is 
little  enough  appearance  now  that  there  will  ever. 
Your  good  impression  of  the  Bostonians  greatly 
moves  me — the  thing  was  no  success  whatever  on 
publication  in  the  Century  (where  it  came  out,) 
and  the  late  R.  W.  Gilder,  of  that  periodical,  wrote 
me  at  the  time  that  they  had  never  published 
anything  that  appeared  so  little  to  interest  their 
readers.  I  felt  about  it  myself  then  that  it  was 
probably  rather  a  remarkable  feat  of  objectivity — 
but  I  never  was  very  thoroughly  happy  about  it, 
and  seem  to  recall  that  I  found  the  subject  and  the 
material,  after  I  had  got  launched  in  it,  under 
some  illusion,  less  interesting  and  repaying  than 
I  had  assumed  it  to  be.  All  the  same  I  should  have 
liked  to  review  it  for  the  Edition — it  would  have 
come  out  a  much  truer  and  more  curious  thing 
(it  was  meant  to  be  curious  from  the  first;)  but 
there  can  be  no  question  of  that,  or  of  the  propor 
tionate  Preface  to  have  been  written  with  it,  at 


AET.  72  TO  EDMUND  GOSSE  499 

present — or  probably  ever  within  my  span  of  life. 
Apropos  of  which  matters  I  at  this  moment  hear 
from  Heinemann  that  four  or  five  of  my  books 
that  he  has  have  quite  (entirely)  ceased  to  sell  and 
that  he  must  break  up  the  plates.  Of  course  he 
must;  I  have  nothing  to  say  against  it;  and  the 
things  in  question  are  mostly  all  in  the  Edition. 
But  such  is  "success" !  I  should  have  liked  to  write 
that  Preface  to  the  Bostonians — which  will  never 
be  written  now.  But  think  of  noting  now  that 
that  is  a  thing  that  has  perished! 

I  am  doing  my  best  to  feel  better,  and  hope  to 
go  out  this  afternoon  the  first  for  several!  I  am 
exceedingly  with  you  all  over  Philip's  transfer  to 
France.  We  are  with  each  other  now  as  not  yet 
before  over  everything  and  I  am  yours  and  your 
wife's  more  than  ever, 

H.  J. 


To  Mrs.  Wilfred  Sheridan. 

Lieut.  Wilfred  Sheridan,  Rifle  Brigade,  fell  in  action 
at  Loos,  September  25,  1915. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

October  4th,  1915. 
Dearest,  dearest  Clare, 

I  have  heard  twice  from  your  kindest  of 
Fathers,  and  yet  this  goes  to  you  (for  poor  baffling 
personal  reasons)  with  a  dreadful  belatedness. 
The  thought  of  coming  into  your  presence,  and 
into  Mrs.  Sheridan's,  with  such  wretched  empty 
and  helpless  hands  is  in  itself  paralysing;  and  yet, 
even  as  I  say  that,  the  sense  of  how  my  whole  soul 
is  full,  even  to  its  being  racked  and  torn,  of  Wil 
fred's  belovedest  image  and  the  splendour  and 
devotion  in  which  he  is  all  radiantly  wrapped  and 


500       LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1915 

enshrined,  [makes  me]  ask  myself  if  I  don't  really 
bring  you  something,  of  a  sort,  in  thus  giving  you 
the  assurance  of  how  absolutely  I  adored  him!  Yet 
who  can  give  you  anything  that  approaches  your 
incomparable  sense  that  he  was  yours,  and  you 
his,  to  the  last  possessed  and  possessing  radiance 
of  him?  I  can't  pretend  to  utter  to  you  words  of 
"consolation" — vainest  of  dreams:  for  what  is 
your  suffering  but  the  measure  of  his  virtue,  his 
charm  and  his  beauty? — everything  we  so  loved 
him  for.  But  I  see  you  marked  with  his  glory  too, 
and  so  intimately  associated  with  his  noble  legend, 
with  the  light  of  it  about  you,  and  about  his  chil 
dren,  always,  and  the  precious  privilege  of  making 
him  live  again  whenever  one  approaches  you;  con 
vinced  as  I  am  that  you  will  rise,  in  spite  of  the 
unspeakable  laceration,  to  the  greatness  of  all  this 
and  feel  it  carry  you  in  a  state  of  sublime  privilege. 
I  had  sight  and  some  sound  of  him  during  an  hour 
of  that  last  leave,  just  before  he  went  off  again; 
and  what  he  made  me  then  feel,  and  what  his  face 
seemed  to  say,  amid  that  cluster  of  relatives  in 
which  I  was  the  sole  outsider  (of  which  too  I  was 
extraordinarily  proud,)  is  beyond  all  expression. 
I  don't  know  why  I  presume  to  say  such  things 
— I  mean  poor  things  only  of  mine,  to  you,  all 
stricken  and  shaken  as  you  are — and  then  again 
I  know  how  any  touch  of  his  noble  humanity  must 
be  unspeakably  dear  to  you,  and  that  you'll  go  on 
getting  the  fragrance  of  them  wherever  he  passed. 
I  think  with  unutterable  tenderness  of  those  days 
of  late  last  autumn  when  you  were  in  the  little 
house  off  the  Edgware  Road,  and  the  humour  and 
gaiety  and  vivid  sympathy  of  his  talk  (about  his 
then  beginnings  and  conditions)  made  me  hang 
spellbound  on  his  lips.  But  what  memories  are 
these  not  to  you,  and  how  can  one  speak  to  you 
at  all  without  stirring  up  the  deeps?  Well  we  are 
all  in  them  with  you,  and  with  his  mother — and 


AET.  72   TO  MRS.  WILFRED  SHERIDAN  501 

may  I  speak  of  his  father? — and  with  his  children, 
and  we  cling  to  you  and  cherish  you  as  never  be 
fore.  I  live  with  you  in  thought  every  step  of  the 
long  way,  and  am  yours,  dearest  Clare,  all  de 
votedly  and  sharingly, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


To  Hugh  Walpole. 

21  Carlyle  Mansions, 
Cheyne  Walk,  S.W. 

Nov.  13th,  1915. 

...  I  take  to  my  heart  these  blest  Cornish 
words  from  you  and  thank  you  for  them  as  articu 
lately  as  my  poor  old  impaired  state  permits.  It 
will  be  an  immense  thing  to  see  you  when  your  own 
conditions  permit  of  it,  and  in  that  fond  vision  I 
hang  on.  I  have  been  having  a  regular  hell  of  a 
summer  and  autumn  (that  is  more  particularly 
from  the  end  of  July : )  through  the  effect  of  a  bad 
— an  aggravated  —  heart-crisis,  during  the  first 
weeks  of  which  I  lost  valuable  time  by  attributing 
(under  wrong  advice)  my  condition  to  mistaken 
causes ;  but  I  am  in  the  best  hands  now  and  appar 
ently  responding  very  well  to  very  helpful  treat 
ment.  But  the  past  year  has  made  me  feel  twenty 
years  older,  and,  frankly,  as  if  my  knell  had  rung. 
Still,  I  cultivate,  I  at  least  attempt,  a  brazen  front. 
I  shall  not  let  that  mask  drop  till  I  have  heard 
your  thrilling  story.  Do  intensely  believe  that  I 
respond  clutchingly  to  your  every  grasp  of  me, 
every  touch,  and  would  so  gratefully  be  a  re-con 
necting  link  with  you  here — where  I  don't  wonder 
that  you're  bewildered.  (It  will  be  indeed,  as  far 
as  I  am  concerned,  the  bewildered  leading  the  be 
wildered.)  I  have  "seen"  very  few  people — I  see 
as  few  as  possible,  I  can't  stand  them,  and  all  their 


502      LETTERS  OF  HENRY  JAMES       1015 

promiscuous  prattle,  mostly;  so  that  those  who 
have  reported  of  me  to  you  must  have  been  pecul 
iarly  vociferous.  I  deplore  with  all  my  heart  your 
plague  of  boils  and  of  insomnia;  I  haven't  known 
the  former,  but  the  latter,  alas,  is  my  own  actual 
portion.  I  think  I  shall  know  your  rattle  of  the 
telephone  as  soon  as  ever  I  shall  hear  it.  Heaven 
speed  it,  dearest  Hugh,  and  keep  me  all  fondestly 
yours, 

HENRY  JAMES. 


INDEX 


Abbey,  Edwin,  i.  88,  232;  ii.  90, 

186. 
Adams,  Henry,  letters  to,  i.  431; 

ii,   360. 

Aid£,  Hamilton,  ii.  59. 
Ainger,  Canon,  i.  177. 
Alexander,  Sir  George,  i.  146. 
Allen,   Miss  Jessie,  letters   to,  i. 

379;  ii.  158. 
Ambassadors,    The,    i.    273,    354, 

375-7,  413;  ii.  10,  245,  333. 
American,  The,  i.  47,  325;  ii.  333. 

(dramatic     version)     i.     146, 

161,  166,  172-4,  176,  181,  185; 

ii.  354. 
American  Scene,  The,  ii.  4,  36,  45, 

83. 

Andersen,  Hendrik,  ii.  74. 
Anderson,    Miss    Mary,   see    Na- 

varro,  Mrs.  A.  F.  de. 
Archer,  William,  i.  172,  176,  228. 
Arnold,  Matthew,  i.  125. 
Aspern  Papers,  The,  i.  86. 
Asquith,    Right   Hon.    H.   H.,  ii. 

460,  480,  481. 
Awkward  Age,  The,  i.  273,  292, 

317,    319,    325,    333,    334;    ii. 

241. 

Bailey,  John,  letter  to,  ii.  269. 
Balestier,    Wolcott,    i.    148,    167, 

186,  189. 

Balfour,  Right  Hon.  A.  J.,  ii.  49. 
Balfour,  Graham,  i.  386. 
Balzac,  i.  327;  ii.  254,  350,  351. 
Barnard,  Frederick,  i.  88. 
Barres,  Maurice,  i.  221,  270. 
Bartholomew,  A.  T.,  ii.  127. 


Beardsley,  Aubrey,  ii.  343. 

Bell,    Mrs.    Hugh    (Lady    Bell), 

letters  to,  i.  173;  ii.  231. 
Bennett,  Arnold,  ii.  261,  262. 
Benson,  Archbishop,  i.  278. 
Benson,  Arthur  C.,  i.  217;  ii.  62, 

112,  123.     Letters  to,  i.  240, 

251,  262,  278;  ii.  125,  364. 
Bernstein,  Henry,  ii.  319-21,  357. 
Berry,  Walter  V.  R.,  ii.  297,  425. 

Letter  to,  ii.  217. 
Better  Sort,  The,  i.  273. 
Bigelow,  Mrs.,  letters  to,  ii.  159, 

278. 

Biltmore,  ii.  25. 
Bjornson,  i.  220,  221. 
Blanche,  Jacques,  ii.  108-10. 
Blandy,  Mary,  ii.  356,  371,  372. 
Blocqueville,  Madame  de,  i.  46. 
Blowitz,  i.  154. 
Boit,  Edward,  ii.  75. 
Bonn,  i.  5. 

Bonnard,  Abel,  ii.  357. 
Boott,  Frank,  i.  57,  98. 
Bosanquet,  Miss  T.,  letter  to,  ii. 

204. 
Dostonians,   The,  i.  86,  115,  121, 

135,  325;  ii.  98,  498. 
Boulogne-sur-mer,  i.  5;  ii.  374. 
Bourget,    Paul,   i.    149,   154,    188, 

195,  201,  205,  206,  220,  247, 

274,  316;  ii.  56.     Letter  to,  i. 

286. 
Bourget,    Madame    Paul,    letters 

to,  i.  292,  410. 
Boutroux,  Emile,  ii.  428. 
Braxfield,  Lord  Justice  Clerk,  ii. 
372. 


503 


504 


INDEX 


Bridges,     Robert,    ii.     153,    337. 

Letter  to,  ii.  341. 
Bright,  John,  i.  76. 
Brighton,  ii.  61. 
Broadway,  i.  88. 
Brooke,     Rupert,    ii.     127,    380, 

462-5,  468,  472-4. 
Brooks,  Cunliffe,  i.  63. 
Broughton,  Miss  Rhoda,  ii.  13,  59, 

75,  331.     Letters  to,  ii.  178, 

238,  317,  389,  408. 
Browne,  Denis,  ii.  474. 
Browning,  Robert,  i.  7;  ii.  234. 
Browning,  Robert  Barrett,  i.  168, 

169. 

Bryce,  Viscount,  ii.  381. 
Bryn  Mawr,  ii.  3,  27,  28,  53. 
Burne-Jones,  Sir  Edward,  i.  125, 

196,  307-9,  339,  340. 
Burton,  Sir  Richard,  ii.  256. 

Cadwalader,  John,  ii.  82,  193. 
California,  ii.  32-4. 
Cambon,  Paul,  i.  143. 
Cannan,  Gilbert,  ii.  324. 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  i.  122-4. 
Caro,  E.  M.,  i.  46. 
Chamberlain,  Joseph,  ii.  12. 
Chapman,  R.  W.,  letter  to,  ii.  241. 
Charmes,  Xavier,  i.  143. 
Charteris,  Hon.  Evan,  letters  to, 

ii.  436,  453. 
Chicago,  ii.  31. 
Childe,  Edward  Lee,  i.  50.  Letters 

to,  ii.  10,  120. 
Chocorua    (New   Hampshire),  ii. 

2,  18,  134,  165. 
Clark,  Sir  John,  i.  62. 
Clifford,  Mrs.  W.  K.,  letters  to,  i. 

381;  ii.  18,  29,  129,  171,  234, 

392,  397. 

Colvin,  Lady,  see  Sitwell,  Mrs. 
Colvin,    Sir    Sidney,    i.    Ill,    133, 

156,   160,  177,   188,   189,   191, 

204,  223;  ii.  278.     Letters  to, 

i.  224,  236,  330. 


Compton,    Edward,    i.    146,    166, 

167,  172-4;  ii.  354. 
Confidence,  i.  43,  69. 
Conrad,  Joseph,  i.  390,  405. 
Coppee,  F.,  i.  154. 
Cory,  William,  i.  262. 
Cotes,  Mrs.  Everard,  letter  to,  i. 

346. 

Covering  End,  i.  298,  299;  ii.  6. 
Crapy  Cornelia,  ii.  139. 
Crawford,  Marion,  i.  275,  319. 
Creighton,  Bishop,  ii.  275. 
Crewe,  Marquis  of,  see  Houghton, 

Lord. 

Curtis,  George,  i.  197. 
Curtis,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Daniel,  i.  87, 

127,  166,  168,  169,  378;  ii.  76. 

Daisy  Miller,  i.  43,  65,  66,  68,  92. 
Darwin,  W.  E.,  ii.  412. 
Darwin,  Mrs.  W.  E.,  i.  257. 
Daudet,    Alphonse,    i.    41,    102-4, 

154,    240,    241,    247,    269;    ii. 

254.     Letter  to,  i.  108. 
Death  of  the  Lion,  The,  i.  217. 
De  Vere,  Aubrey,  i.  16. 
Dew-Smith,  Mrs.,  letter  to,  ii.  55. 
Dickens,  Charles,  ii.  40,  138. 
Dickens,  Miss,  i.  16. 
Dino,  Duchesse  de,  ii.  121. 
Dolben,     Digby     Mackworth,    ii. 

337-9,  341-3. 
Dore",  Gustave,  i.  45. 
Dostoieffsky,  ii.  237. 
Dresden,  i.  148,  186. 
Dublin  Castle,  i.  238,  239. 
Dublin,  Royal  Hospital,  i.  238. 
Du  Breuil,  Jean,  ii.  457,  465. 
Du  Maurier,  George,  i.  143,  177. 

Letters  to,  i.  98,  212. 
Dumas,  Alexandre,  ii.  410. 

Edwards,  Miss  M.  Betham,  letter 

to,  ii.  213. 
Eliot,   George,  i.  42,  51,  61,  66; 

ii.  40,  284. 


INDEX 


505 


Elliott,  Miss  Gertrude  (Lady 
Forbes-Robertson),  ii.  95. 

Emerson,  R.  W.,  i.  422;  ii.  290. 

Emmet,  Miss  Ellen  (Mrs.  Blanch- 
ard  Rand),  letters  to,  ii.  107, 
189. 

English  Hours,  ii.  101. 

Esher,  Viscount,  ii.  193. 

Etretat,  i.  42;  ii.  257. 

Europeans,  The,  i.  43,  65,  66. 

Fawcett,  E.,  i.  285. 
Fezandie,  Institution  (Paris),  i.  4. 
Filippi,  Filippo,  ii.  75,  80. 
Finer  Grain,  The,  ii.  139,  291. 
FitzGerald,   Edward,  i.  260. 
Flaubert,  Gustave,  i.  41,  42,  46, 

49;  ii.  256,  258. 
Florence,  i.  21,  24,  35-7,  43,  57, 

127. 

Florida,  ii.  26,  30. 
Forbes-Robertson,    Sir.   J.,    ii.    6, 

96. 

Fox,  Lazarus,  i.  15. 
France,  Anatole,  i.  201;  ii.  277. 
Fullerton,  W.  Morton,  ii.  156. 

Galton,  Sir  Douglas,  i.  177. 
Gardner,  Mrs.  John  L.,  i.  342;  ii. 

17.     Letters  to,  i.  92,  238;  ii. 

195. 

Gautier,  Th£ophile,  i.  46;  ii.  410. 
Gay,  Walter,  ii.  414. 
Geneva,  i.  139,  140. 
Gilder,  R.  W.,  ii.  498. 
Gilder,  Mrs.  R.  W.,  letter  to,  ii. 

401. 

Gissing,  George,  i.  390. 
Gladstone,  W.  E.,  i.  53,  96;  ii.  11. 
Glehn,  Wilfred  von,  ii.  233. 
Godkin,  E.  L.,  i.  285,  377. 
Golden  Bowl,  The,  i.  273;  ii,  10, 

15,  28,  30,  41,  43,  209,  333. 
Golden  Dream,  The,  i.  329. 
Goncourt  Academy,  the,  ii.  62. 


Goncourt,  Edmond  de,  i.  41,  102, 
104,  154,  247;  ii.  260. 

Gordon,  Lady  Hamilton,  i.  62. 

Gosse,  Edmund,  i.  138,  148,  251, 
362;  ii.  85.  Reminiscences 
by,  i.  88.  Letters  to,  i.  129, 
172,  185,  202,  217,  220,  221, 
223,  246,  332,  344,  378,  385; 
ii.  19,  24,  246,  248,  250,  252, 
255,  257,  274,  348,  409,  430, 
480,  492,  496. 

Gosse,  Mrs.  Edmund,  letter  to,  i. 
201. 

Grainger,  Percy,  ii.  233. 

Greville,  Mrs.,  i.  66,  71,  80. 

Groombridge  Place,  i.  364. 

Grove,  Mrs.  Archibald,  letter  to, 
ii.  324. 

Guy  Domville,  i.  147,  149,  210, 
226-9,  232-6. 


Haggard,  Rider,  i.  156. 

Haldane,  Viscount,  ii.  428. 

Hardy,    Thomas,   i.    190,   200;    ii. 
108. 

Harland,  Henry,  i.  203,  217. 

Harrison,  Frederic,  ii.  204,  398. 
Letter  to,  ii.  483. 

Harrison,  Mrs.  Frederic,  letter  to, 
ii.  202. 

Harvard,  ii.  21,  153,  188. 

Harvey,    Sir    Paul,    ii.    93,    122. 
Letter  to,  ii.  47. 

Hawthorne  (English  Men  of  Let 
ters  Series),  i.  71,  72. 

Hay,  John,  i.  264,  407;  ii.  26. 

Heidelberg,  i.  32. 

Henley,  W.  E.,  i.  386,  387. 

Hennessy,  Mrs.  Richard,  ii.   135. 

Henschel,  Sir  George,  letter  to,  i. 
229. 

Hewlett,  Maurice,  i.  345. 

High  Bid,  The,  ii.  6,  90,  94,  96. 

Holland,  Sidney,  i.  63. 

Holmes,  Wendell,  i.  244,  295. 


506 


INDEX 


Hosmer,  B.  G.,  i.  18. 
Houghton,  Lord,  i.  52,  53. 
Houghton,     Lord     (Marquis     of 

Crewe),  i.  238. 
Howells,  W.  D.,  i.  10,  14,  30,  60, 

267.    Letters  to,  i.  33,  47,  71, 

103,  134,"  163,   197,  230,  277, 

291,  349,  354,  375,  397,  407, 

413;  ii.  8,  98,  118,  221. 
Hueffer,  Mrs.   F.  M.,  see  Hunt, 

Miss  Violet. 
Hugo,  Victor,  i.  46. 
Humieres,  Vicomte  Robert  d',  ii. 

78. 
Hunt,  Miss   Violet    (Mrs.   F.   M. 

Hueffer),  letter  to,  i.  424. 
Hunt,  William,  i.  5,  7. 
Hunter,  Mrs.  Charles,  ii.  152,  195, 

196,  208,  233,  320.    Letter  to, 

ii.  170. 
Hunter,  Mrs.  George,  letter  to,  i. 

258. 

Huntington,  Mrs.,  i.  23. 
Huntly,  Marquis  of,  i.  63. 
Huxley,  T.  H.,  i.  52. 

Ibsen,  i.  212. 

International  Episode,  An,  i.  65, 

67. 

Ireland,  i.  121,  153,  216. 
Italy,  i.  37,  43,  106,  126;  ii.  80, 

439,  440. 
Ivory  Tower,  The,  ii.  98,  154,  380. 

James,  George  Abbot,  ii.  190,  196. 
Letters  to,  ii.  110,  113. 

James,  Henry:  character  and 
methods  of  work,  i.  xiii-xxxi: 
birth  and  early  years,  i.  1-11: 
visits  to  Europe,  i.  11-14: 
settles  in  Europe,  i.  41:  life 
in  London,  i.  42-44,  84,  85, 
87:  settles  at  Lamb  House, 
Rye,  i.  150,  151,  272-4:  re 
visits  America,  i.  276;  ii.  1-4: 
last  visit  to  America,  ii.  152, 


153:  settles  in  Chelsea,  ii.  154: 
seventieth  birthday,  ii.  154, 
307-12:  naturalised  as  a  Brit 
ish  subject,  ii.  381,  477-81, 
491,  492:  last  illness  and 
death,  ii.  381:  dramatic  work, 
i.  144,  161-3,  166-8,  179-83, 
206,  234,  235;  ii.  6:  collected 
edition  of  his  fiction,  ii.  4, 
70,  96,  98-100,  497-9:  im 
pressions  of  England  and  the 
English,  i.  21-3,  26,  27,  31, 
42,  55,  58,  64,  68,  69,  74,  84, 
85,  87,  96,  114,  124;  ii.  377, 
416,  417,  435,  443. 

James,  Henry,  senior,  i.  1-3,  9, 
27,  83,  92,  97,  98,  111,  112. 
Letters  to,  i.  28,  32,  45. 

James,  Mrs.  Henry,  senior  (Miss 
Mary  Walsh),  i.  2,  82,  92;  ii. 
47.  Letters  to,  i.  19,  21,  32, 
38,  67,  76. 

James,  Henry,  junior,  letters  to, 
i.  309;  ii.  16,  96,  239,  288, 
345,  385,  419,  477,  490. 

James,  Miss  Alice,  i.  1,  13,  84,  86, 
112,  120,  140,  143,  148,  187, 
189,  214-17.  Letters  to,  i.  15, 
62,  166. 

James,  Miss  Margaret  (Mrs. 
Bruce  Porter),  letters  to,  ii. 
36,  53. 

James,  Robertson,  i.  1,  97;  ii.  152, 
164. 

James,  Wilkinson,  i.  1,  6,  7,  9. 

James,  William,  i.  1-3,  5,  7,  9,  14, 
42,  44,  84,  149,  275,  276,  295, 
305,  338,  339,  343,  344;  ii. 
151,  152,  166-8,  300,  329,  330, 
345.  Letters  to,  i.  24,  26,  50, 
59,  65,  97,  102,  111,  115,  119, 
139,  154,  170,  179,  210,  214, 
227,  232,  244,  280,  315,  371, 
415;  ii.  34,  42,  50,  52,  82,  134, 
140. 


INDEX 


507 


James,  Mrs.  William,  ii.  151,  152. 

Letters  to,  i.  263,  301 ;  ii.  32, 

194,  205,  299,  305,  329,  361, 

449. 
James,  William,  junior,  letters  to, 

ii.  71,  314,  394. 
James,  Mrs.  William,  junior,  gee 

Runnells,  Miss  Alice. 
Jersey,  Countess  of,  letter  to,  i. 

192. 
Jones,    Mrs.  Cadwalader,  letters 

to,  i.  395,  401. 
Jusserand,  J.  J.,  i.  143;  ii.  26. 

Kemble,  Mrs.  Fanny,  i.  67,  70, 
83,  95,  128;  ii.  148.  Letter 
to,  i.  78. 

Kempe,  C.  E.,  i.  254,  255. 

Keynes,  Geoffrey,  ii.  127. 

Kipling,  Rudyard,  i.  156,  178,  188, 
189,  249,  271,  339,  341. 

Lady  Barbarina,  i.  103. 
La  Farge,  John,  i.  402. 
Lamb  House,  Rye,  description  of, 

i.  265-7;  fire  at,  i.  312-14. 
Lang,  Andrew,  i.  138;  ii.  275-7. 
Langtry,  Mrs.,  i.  63. 
Lapsley,  Gaillard  T.,  ii.  90,  110. 

Letters  to,  i.  285,  391 ;  ii.  62, 

92;  267. 

Lawrence,  D.  H.,  ii.  324. 
Leighton,  Lord,  i.  243. 
Lemaitre,  Jules,  ii.  413,  467. 
Lesson  of  Balzac,  The,  ii.  3,  27, 

30. 
Lesson  of  the  Master,  The,  i.  86, 

192. 

Leverett,  Rev.  W.  C.,  i.  7. 
Lewes,  G.  H.,  i.  61. 
Lincoln,  Abraham,  ii.  347,  348. 
Little  Tour  in  France,  A,  i.  83. 
Lodge,  Mrs.  Henry  Cabot,  letter 

to,  ii.  447. 
London,  i.  42,  43,  54,  55,  59,  70, 

74;  ii.  36,  37. 


Loti,  Pierre,  i.  202,  203,  325,  327. 
Lowell,  James   Russell,  i.  13,  56, 

75,  115,  184,  197.     Letter  to, 

i.  118. 
Lubbock,  Percy,  letters  to,  i.  390; 

ii.  310. 

Lushington,  Miss,  i.  54. 
Lyall,  Sir  Alfred,  i.  177. 
Lydd,  i.  362. 


Mackenzie,  Compton,  ii.  353.   Let 
ters  to,  ii.  354,  437,  475. 
Mackenzie,  Miss  Muir,  letters  to, 

i.  283,  373,  382. 

McKinley,  President,  i.  249,  379. 
Malvern,  Great,  i.  26,  28. 
Marble,  Manton,  ii.  44,  83. 
Marsh,  Edward,  letters  to,  ii.  462, 

464,  468,  472,  474. 
Martin,  Sir  Theodore,  i.  177. 
Mathew,  Lady,  ii.  390. 
Mathews,  Mrs.  Frank,  letter  to,  i. 

406. 
Maupassant,    Guy    de,    i.    41 ;    ii. 

256-60. 

Meilhac,  i.  154. 
Mentmore,  i.  76. 
Meredith,  George,  i.  219,  241;  ii. 

249-57,  438. 
Middle  Years,  The,  i.  1,  65;  ii.  36, 

380. 

Milan,  i.  78,  122. 
Millais,  Sir  J.  E.,  i.  76. 
Millet,  Frank,  i.  88,  314. 
Monte"gut,  Emile  de,  i.  46. 
Morley,  John,  Viscount,  i.  52,  53, 

372;  ii.  11,  251. 

Morris,  William,  i.  16-19,  340,  341. 
Morris,   Mrs.   William,   i.   17,   18, 

80. 
Morse,   Miss   Frances   R.,   letters 

to,  i.  255,  294. 

Munich,  i.  32;  ii.  142,  143,  244. 
Musset,   Alfred  de,  i.  8;  ii.   156, 

157. 


508 


INDEX 


Myers,  F.  W.  H.,  i.  371.     Letter 
to,  i.  300. 

Naples,  i.  43. 

Nauheim,  ii.  152,  163. 

Navarro,  A.  F.  de,  letters  to,  i. 

311,  348,  364,  368;  ii.  286. 
Navarro,    Mrs.    A.    F.    de    (Miss 

Mary    Anderson),    letter    to, 

i.  328. 

New  England,  ii.  19,  20,  135. 
New  Novel,  The,  ii.  350. 
New  York,  i.  99 ;  ii.  23,  25. 
Newport,  i.  5-9. 
Norris,  W.  E.,  i.  218;  ii.  239,  319. 

Letters   to,   i.   242,   250,  361, 

366,   425;   ii.    12,   22,   45,   58, 

84,  87,  114,  160,  173,  211. 
Norton,    Charles    Eliot,    i.    10-12, 

15,  353;  ii.  69,  118,  119,  295. 

Letters  to,  i.  30,  74,  91,  122, 

183,  193,  306,  337. 
Norton,  Miss  Elizabeth,  letter  to, 

ii.  441. 
Norton,  Miss  Grace,  letters  to,  i. 

35,   54,  56,   69,  93,   100,   113, 

126,  268;  ii.  67,  131,  165,  293, 

412,  431. 
Norton,    Richard,    ii.    380,    412, 

431-3. 
Notes  of  a  Son  and  Brother,  i.  1 ; 

ii.  152,  290,  345,  360,  402. 
Notes  on  Novelists,  ii.   118,   153, 

227,  234,  350,  409. 

Oberammergau,  i.  166,  169. 
Ohnet,  Georges,  ii.  467. 
Ortmans,  F.,  i.  247. 
Osbourne,  Lloyd,  i.  175,  176,  183, 

201. 

Osterley,  i.  192,  193. 
Other  House,   The,  i.  251;   ii.  6, 

129,  131. 
Outcry,  The,  ii.  6,  129,  183,  202, 

209,  214,  280,  291. 
Oxford,  ii.   153,   188,  243. 


Oxford  and  Cambridge  boat-race, 
i.  53. 

Paget,  Sir  James,  i.  177. 
Palgrave,  Miss  Gwenllian,  letter 

to,  ii.  81. 
Paris,  i.  41,  43,  48,  51,  57,  149, 

154;  ii.  5,  85,  86. 
Parsons,  Alfred,  i.  88,  266. 
Partial  Portraits,  i.  98,  110,  130. 
Passionate  Pilgrim,  A,  i.  12. 
Pater,  Walter,  i.  221,  222. 
Peabody,  Miss,  i.  115-17. 
Pell,  Duncan,  i.  6. 
Perry,    Thomas    Sergeant,    remi 
niscences  by,  i.  6-9.     Letters 

to,  ii.  61,  146,  167,  367,  416, 

459. 
Perry,  Mrs.  T.  S.,  letters  to,  ii. 

406,  427. 

Philadelphia,  ii.  25,  26. 
Phillips,  Sir  Claude,  letter  to,  ii. 

376. 
Pinker,  J.  B.,  letters  to,  ii.   15, 

105,  482. 
Playden,  i.  150. 
Pollock,  Sir  Frederick,  i.  70. 
Porter,   Bruce,  letters  to,  ii.   65, 

164,  302. 
Porter,   Mrs.    Bruce,   see   James, 

Miss  Margaret. 
Portrait  of  a  Lady,   The,  i.  44, 

132,  279;  ii.  333. 
Portraits  of  Places,  i.  378. 
Powell,  George  E.  J.,  ii.  257. 
Prevost,  Marcel,  i.  220. 
Primoli,  Giuseppe,  i.  239. 
Princess  Casamassima,  The,  i.  86, 

135,  325;  ii.  333. 
Procter,  Mrs.,  i.  131. 
Prothero,  George  W.,  letter  to, 

ii.  469. 
Prothero,  Mrs.  G.  W.,  letters  to, 

ii.  313,  332. 
Proust,  Marcel,  ii.  357. 


INDEX 


509 


Question  of  Our  Speech,  The,  ii. 

3,  35. 
Quilter,  Roger,  ii.  233. 

Raffalovich,  Andr6,  letter  to,  ii. 

343. 

Rand,  Mrs.   Blanchard,  see  Em 
met,  Miss  Ellen. 
Redesdale,  Lord,  ii.  249 
Renan,  Ernest,  i.  7. 
Repplier,  Miss  Agnes,  ii.  26,  28. 
Reubell,    Miss    Henrietta,    letters 

to,  i.  90,  225,  333;  ii.  139. 
Reverberator,  The,  i.  86. 
Rheims,  ii.  405,  407,  415. 
Richmond,  Bruce  L.,  letter  to,  ii. 

350. 

Ritchie,  Lady,  letter  to,  ii.  304. 
Rochette,  Institution  (Geneva),  i. 

5. 
Roderick  Hudson,  i.  14,  41,  132; 

ii.  55,  333. 
Rome,  i.  24,  25,  43,  56,  57;  ii.  74, 

79,  80,  100,  101. 
Roosevelt,    President,   i.    379;    ii. 

273,  449. 

Rosebery,  Earl  of,  i.  77. 
Rossetti,  D.  G.,  i.  18;  ii.  295. 
Rostand,    Edmond,    i.    349,    368, 

369. 
Roughead,  William,  letters  to,  ii. 

327,  356,  371,  373. 
Runnells,  Miss  Alice  (Mrs.  Will 
iam  James,  junior),  letter  to, 

ii.  201. 

Ruskin,  John,  i.  7,  16,  20. 
Rye,  i.  150,  245,  261,  262,  264-7, 

272-6;  ii.  4-7. 

Sacred  Fount,   The,  i.   273,   356, 

408,  409. 

St.  Augustine  (U.  S.  A.),  ii.  27. 
St.  Gaudens,  A.,  i.  255,  257,  259. 
San  Francisco,  earthquake  at,  ii. 

50,  52,  65. 


San  Gimignano,  i.  195. 

Sand,  George,  i.  51;  ii.  56,  157, 

227,  228,  350,  351,  375,  387, 

410. 
Sands,  Mrs.  Mahlon,  letter  to,  i. 

186. 
Sargent,  John  S.,  i.  88,  102,  334; 

ii.  154,  233,  309,  316,  318,  348, 

359,  366,  368,  437.    Letter  to, 

ii.  493. 
Saunders,  T.  Bailey,  letters  to,  ii. 

155,  186. 

Saxmundham,  i.  260. 
Sayle,  Charles,  letter  to,  ii.   127. 
Schopenhauer,  i.  7. 
Scott,  Clement,  i.  228. 
Sedgwick,  Arthur,  i.  30. 
Sense   of   the   Past,    The,  i.   349, 

352,  355;   ii.  380,  425. 
Serao,  Mathilde,  i.  292. 
Shakespeare,   William,  i.   424;  ii. 

62,  164. 
Sheridan,   Wilfred,  letters   to,  ii. 

215,  470,  494. 
Sheridan,  Mrs.  Wilfred,  letters  to, 

ii.  199,  499. 

Siege  of  London,  The,  ii.  119. 
Siena,  i.  149,  193-6. 
Simon,  Sir  John,  ii.  491. 
Sitwell,    Mrs.    (Lady    Colvin),    i. 

152,  177,  200. 

Small  Boy  and  Others,  A,  i.  2;  ii. 

153,  205,  289,  307-9. 
Smalley,  G.  W.,  i.  242,  243,  281. 
Smith,  Goldwin,  i.  52. 

Smith,  Logan  Pearsall,  letter  to, 

ii.  337. 
Smith,  Miss  Madeleine  Hamilton, 

ii.  373,  374. 
Soft  Side,  The,  i.  273. 
Spencer,  Herbert,  i.  60,  61. 
Spoils   of    Poynton,    The,   i.    149, 

150,  246,  408. 
Stephen,  Sir  James,  i.  177. 
Stephen,    Sir    Leslie,    i.    16,    218, 

270. 


510 


INDEX 


Stevenson,    Robert    Louis,    i.    86, 
120,  129,  139,  217,  219,  223-5, 

236,  237,  330-2,  386,  387;   ii. 

237,  371.     Letters  to,  i.  110, 
130,   132,   136,  152,   155,  158, 
174,  181,   188,  190,  199,  204, 
207. 

Stevenson,  Mrs.  R.  L.,  i.  394;  ii. 

66,  303. 
Story,   William   Wetmore,  i.    13, 

274,  411-13,  431. 
Story,  Mrs.  Waldo,  letter  to,  i. 

411. 

Strasbourg,  i.  33. 
Sturges,    Jonathan,    i.    304,    313, 

331,  334,  376.     Letter  to,  i. 

248. 
Sturgis,  Howard  O.,  ii.  200,  267, 

456.     Letters  to,  i.  317,  428; 

ii.  72,  74,  192,  330,  382. 
Sturgis,   Julian   R.,   letter   to,   i. 

212. 
Sturgis,  Mrs.  J.  R.,  letter  to,  ii. 

14. 
Sutro,  Mrs.  Alfred,  letters  to,  ii. 

319,  375,  387. 
Swedenborg,  i.  3. 
Swinburne,  A.  C.,  ii.  246,  248, 

249,  255-7,  275. 

Swynnerton,  Mrs.,  ii.  194,  195. 
Symonds,  John  Addington,  i.  378. 

Letter  to,  i.  106. 
Syracuse  (N.  Y.),  i.  84. 

Taine,  H.,  ii.  226,  245. 

Talleyrand,  ii.  122. 

Temple,  Miss  Mary,  i.  26;  ii.  361, 

362,  402. 

Tennyson,  Alfred,  Lord,  i.  53,  66. 
Terry,  Miss  Marion,  i.  146,  235. 
Thackeray,  W.  M.,  ii.  39,  40. 
Theatricals,  i.  147. 
Titian,  i.  20. 

Tolstoy,  i.  327;  ii.  237,  324. 
Tragic  Muse,  The,  i.  87,  136,  161, 

163,  183,  325;  ii.  333. 


Transatlantic  Sketches,  i.  13,  14. 
Trevelyan,  Sir  George  O.,  letter 

to,  i.  432. 
Turgenev,  Ivan,  i.  41,  42,  45,  46, 

49,  85. 
Turn  of  the  Screw,  The,  i.  278, 

279,  296,  298,  300,  408. 

Vallombrosa,  i.  171;  ii.  5,  75,  81. 
Vanderbilt,  George,  i.  256;  ii.  25. 
Velvet  Glove,  The,  ii.  5. 
Venice,  i.  87,  168;  ii.  5,  76,  77,  81. 
Vernon,  Miss  Anna,  i.  21. 
Viardot,  Madame,  i.  45. 
Victoria,  Queen,  i.  372. 
Vincent,    Mrs.    Dacre,    letter    to, 

ii.   434. 
Vogue",   Vicomte  Melchior  de,  i. 

316. 

Wagniere,  Madame,  letters  to,  ii. 

76,  144. 
Waldstein,  Dr.  Louis,  letter  to,  i. 

296. 
Walpole,  Hugh,  ii.  125,  126,  173. 

Letters  to,  ii.  112,  122,  236, 

244,  322,  352,  423,  444,  501. 
Walsh,    Miss    Mary,    see   James, 

Mrs.  Henry,  senior. 
Walsh,  Miss   Katharine,  i.  2,   13. 

97,  143. 

War,  American  Civil,  i.  9;  ii.  401. 
War,   European,  ii.  379   to   end, 

passim. 
War,  South  African,  i.  331,  341, 

342,  348. 
War,    Spanish-American,   i.   280, 

292. 
Ward,  Mrs.  Humphry,  letters  to, 

i.  187,  318,  320,  323;  ii.  264, 

265,  366. 
Warren,    Edward,    letters    to,    i. 

261,  315;  ii.  31. 
Warren,  Sir  T.  Herbert,  letter  to, 

ii.  188. 


INDEX 


511 


Washington,  i.  91. 

Washington  Square,  i.  43,  71. 

Watch  and  Ward,  i.  12. 

Wells,  H.  G.,  ii.  44,  249,  266. 
Letters  to,  i.  298,  335,  388, 
400,  404;  ii.  37,  137,  180,  229, 
261,  333,  485,  487. 

Wharton,  Mrs.,  i.  395,  396,  402; 
ii.  5,  35,  97,  117,  118,  266, 
320,  411.  Letters  to,  ii.  56, 
78,  90,  94,  104,  123,  142,  156, 
161,  163,  168,  175,  197,  208, 
227,  281,  357,  369,  391,  399, 
403,  405,  414,  425,  452,  456, 
465. 

What  Maisie  Knew,  I.  150,  290, 
293,  325,  408. 

Wheeler,  C.  E.,  letter  to,  ii.  183. 

White,  Dr.  J.  W.,  letters  to,  ii. 
88,  184,  272,  358. 

White,  Mrs.  Henry,  letters  to,  ii. 
117,  296. 

Wilde,  Oscar,  i.  228,  233. 


Wilson,    President,    ii.    301,    443, 

469. 
Wingg  of  the  Dove,   The,  i.  87, 

273,  399,  402,  405,  407,  408; 

ii.  333. 

Wister,  Owen,  letter  to,  ii.  148. 
Within  the  Rim,  ii.  380,  441,  482. 
Witt,  Robert  C.,  letter  to,  ii.  280. 
Wolff,  Albert,  i.  154. 
Wolseley,  Viscount,  i.  238. 
Wolseley,     Viscountess,     i.     239. 

Letters  to,  i.  254,  369. 
Wood,  Derwent,  ii.  154,  348. 
Woolson,  Miss  C.  F.,  i.  105. 
Worcester,  i.  28. 
Wright,  C.  Hagberg,  letter  to,  ii. 

339. 

Young,  Filson,  ii.  235. 
Young,  Stark,  ii.  332. 

Zola,  Emile,  i.  41,  49,  50,  103-5, 
160,  164,  209,  219. 


BERKELEY 


